Wizard Club
by Simon Draskovic
Summary: The first rule of Wizard Club is, you do not talk about Wizard Club". A mashup of 'Fight Club' and the 'Harry Potter' series. Originally written Nov. 2005, not posted until now.
1. Chapter 1

Wizard Club

Chapter One

Voldemort gets me a job stocking shelves at Ollivander's, after that Voldemort's pushing a wand in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die. For a long time though, Voldemort and I were best friends. People are always asking, did I know about Lord Voldemort.

Screwing my eyes around, I can see the thin writing inscribed into the side of the yew wand, and I can almost feel the pulsing energy of the phoenix feather embedded inside of it. Most of the noise a wand makes is magical energies being released on the audible part of the electromagical band. To silence a wand, you dip it in a potion made of skrewts' blood, gillyweed, and newt tongue. The potion has to be brewed at a precise temperature for three months, with other ingredients added in at exact times. The sound-dampening effect of the potion will last for several years of regular use, give or take a few weeks.

Brew the potion wrong and the wand will blow off your hand.

"This isn't really death," Voldemort says. "We'll be legend. We won't grow old."

I tongue the wand into my cheek and say, Voldemort, you're thinking of vampires.

The tower we're standing on won't be here in ten minutes. You take a 98-percent concetration of dried dragon's breath and add it to three times that amount of giant's blood. Do this in an ice bath. Then add manticore venom drop-by-drop with an eye dropper. You have demon powder.

I know this because Voldemort knows this.

Mix the demon powder with sawdust, and you have a nice jelly explosive. A lot of people mix their demon powder with cotton and add Epsom salts as a sulfate. This works too. Some folks, they use beeswax mixed with demon powder. Beeswax has never, ever worked for me.

So Voldemort and I are on top of the Divination tower of Hogwarts with the wand stuck in my mouth, and we hear glass breaking. Look over the edge. It's a cloudy day, even this high up. This is the castle's tallest tower, and this high up, the wind is always cold. It's so quiet this high up, the feeling you get is that you're one of those house elves. You do the little job you're trained to do.

Bake some cookies.

Scrub some floors.

You don't understand any of it, and then you just die.

Thirty floors up, you look over the edge of the roof and the castle below is mottled with a shag carpet of people, standing, looking up. The breaking glass is a window right below us. A window blows out the side of the building, and then comes a bureau cabinet as big as a black coffin, right below us a six-foot boggart-holding wardrobe drops right out of the cliff face of the building, and drops turning slowly, and drops getting smaller, and drops disappearing into the packed crowd.

Somewhere in the thirty floors under us, the house elves in the Mischief Committee of Dumbledore's Army are running wild, destroying every scrap of history.

That old saying, how you always kill the one you love, well, look, it works both ways.

With a wand stuck in your mouth and between your teeth, you can only talk in vowels.

We're down to our last ten minutes.

Another window blows out of the building, and glass sprays out, sparkling flock-of-pigeons style, and then a dark wooden desk pushed by the Mischief Committee emerges inch by inch from the side of the building until the desk tilts and slides and turns end-over-end into a magic flying thing lost in the crowd. McGonagall's desk always was tricky like that.

Hogwarts School won't be here in nine minutes. You take enough demon powder and wrap the foundation columns of anything, you can topple any building in the world. You have to tamp it good and tight with sandbags so the blast goes against the column and not out into the dungeons around the column.

This how-to stuff isn't in any history book.

The three ways to make napalm: One, you can mix equal parts of lamp oil and frozen pumpkin juice concentrate. Two, you can mix equal parts of firefly juice and butterbeer. Three, you can dissolve crumbled cat litter in firefly juice until the mixture is thick.

Ask me how to make nerve gas. Oh, all those crazy broom bombs. Nine minutes.

The Divination Tower of Hogwarts School will go over, all thirty floors, slow as a tree falling in the forest. Timber. You can topple anything. It's weird to think the place where we're standing will only be a point in the sky. Voldemort and me at the edge of the roof, the wand in my mouth, I'm wondering how clean this wand is.

We just totally forget about Voldemort's whole murder-suicide thing while we watch another wardrobe slip out the side of the building and the cabinets fly open midair, scrolls of parchment caught in the updraft and carried off on the wind.

Eight minutes.

Then the smoke, smoke starts out of the broken windows. The demolition team will hit the primary charge in maybe eight minutes. The primary charge will blow the base charge, the foundation columns will crumble, and the moving pictures of Hogwarts School will go into all the history books.

The magical moving picture show. First, the tower's standing. A second later, the tower will be at an eighty-degree angle. Then a seventy-degree angle. The tower's at a forty-five-degree angle when the skeleton starts to give and the tower gets a slight arch to it. Finally, tower and the school, all thirty floors of stone and brick and mortar, will slam down on the Beauxbatons carriage which is Voldemort's real target.

"This is our world, now, our world," Voldemort says, "and those ancient people are dead."

If I knew how this would all turn out, I'd be more than happy to be dead and in Heaven right now.

Seven minutes.

Up on top of the Divination Tower with Voldemort's wand in my mouth. While desks and cabinets and scrollwork meteor down on the crowd around the castle and smoke funnels up from the broken windows and three miles down the street, in Hogsmeade, the demolition team watches the clock, I know all of this: the wand, the anarchy, the explosion is really about Ginny Weasley.

Six minutes.

We have sort of a triangle thing going here. I want Voldemort. Voldemort wants Ginny. Ginny wants me.

I don't want Ginny and Voldemort doesn't want me around, not anymore. This isn't about love as in caring. This is about property as in ownership.

Without Ginny, Voldemort would have nothing.

Five minutes.

Maybe we would become a legend, maybe not. No, I say, but wait. Where would Merlin be if no one had written the Sword in the Stone? Four minutes.

I tongue the wand into my cheek and say, you want to be a legend, Voldemort, man, I'll make you a legend. I've been here from the beginning.

I remember everything.

Three minutes.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

RON'S BIG ARMS were closed around to hold me inside, and I was squeezed in the dark between Ron's new sweating tits that hang enormous, the way we think of God's as big. Going around the tavern basement full of men, each night we met: this is Lee, this is Cedric, this is Ron; Ron's big shoulders made me think of the horizon. Ron's thick blond hair was what you get when hair cream calls itself Samwell's Sculpting Solution, so thick and red and the part is so straight.

His arms wrapped around me, Ron's hand palms my head against the new tits sprouted on his barrel chest.

"It will be alright," Ron says. "You cry now."

From my knees to my forehead, I feel chemical reactions within Ron burning food and oxygen.

"Maybe they got it all early enough," Ron says. "Maybe it's just Bartholomew's Ball Blight. With Bartholomew's Ball Blight, you have almost a hundred percent survival rate."

Ron's shoulders inhale themselves up in a long draw, then drop, drop, drop in jerking sobs. Draw themselves up. Drop, drop, drop.

I've been coming here every week for two years, and every week Ron wraps his arms around me, and I cry.

"You cry," Ron says and inhales and sob, sob, sobs. "Go on now and cry."

The big wet face settles down on top of my head, and I am lost inside. This is when I'd cry. Crying is right at hand in the smothering dark, closed inside someone else, when you see how everything you can ever accomplish will end up as trash.

Anything you're ever proud of will be thrown away.

And I'm lost inside.

This is as close as I've been to sleeping in almost a week.

This is how I met Ginny Weasley.

Ron cries because six months ago, his testicles were removed. Then hormone potion therapy. Ron has tits because his testosterone ration is too high. Raise the testosterone level too much, your body ups the estrogen to seek a balance. The resulting hormonal disruption alters your body chemistry, which changes the alignment of your personal thaumaturgical field, and makes pretty much everything you ever learned about spellcasting useless.

This is when I'd cry because right now, your life comes down to nothing, and not even nothing, oblivion.

Too much estrogen, and you get bitch tits.

It's easy to cry when you realize that everyone you love will reject you or die. On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone will drop to zero.

Ron loves me because he thinks my testicles were removed, too.

Around us in the Three Broomsticks basement with the thrift store plaid sofas are maybe twenty men and only one woman, all of them clung together in pairs, most of them crying. Some pairs lean forward, heads pressed ear-to-ear, the way wrestlers stand, locked. The man with the only woman plants his elbows on her shoulders; one elbow on either side of her head, her head between his hands, and his face crying against her neck. The woman's face twists off to one side and her hand brings up a cigarette.

I peek out from under the armpit of Big Ron.

"All my life," Ron cries. "Why I do anything, I don't know."

The only woman here at Remaining Wizards Together, the testicular cancer support group, this woman smokes her cigarette under the burden of a stranger, and her eyes come together with mine.

Faker.

Faker.

Faker.

Long red hair, big eyes the way they are in Japanese animation, skim milk thin, buttermilk sallow in her dress with a wallpaper pattern of dark roses, this woman was also in my wormwood support group Friday night. She was in my Sally's Sallow Skin Scourge round table Wednesday night. Monday night she was in my Firm Believers Barda's Blisters rap group. The part down the center of her hair is a crooked lightning bolt of white scalp.

When you look for these support groups, they all have vague upbeat names. My Thursday evening group for blood imps, it's called Free and Clear.

The group I go to for brain imps is called Above and Beyond.

And Sunday afternoon at Remaining Wizards Together in the basement of the Three Broomsticks, this woman is here, again.

Worse than that, I can't cry with her watching.

This should be my favorite part, being held and crying with Big Ron without hope. We all work so hard all the time. This is the only place I ever really relax and give up.

I went to my first support group two years ago, after I'd gone to Madam Pomfrey about my insomnia, again.

Three weeks and I hadn't slept. Three weeks without sleep, and everything becomes an out-of-body experience. Madam Pomfrey said, "Insomnia is just the symptom of something larger. Find out what's actually wrong. Listen to your body."

I just wanted to sleep. I wanted little blue dragonsbreath capsules, half-knut sized. I wanted red and blue turtletongue capsules, lipstick-red mandrake toes.

Madam Pomfrey told me to chew valerian root and get more exercise. Eventually I'd fall asleep.

The bruised, old fruit way my face had collapsed, you would've thought I was dead.

My doctor said, if I wanted to see real pain, I should swing by the Three Broomsticks on a Tuesday night. See the brain imps. See the degenerative bone curses. The thaumaturgical brain dysfunctions. See the living dead getting by.

So I went.

The first group I went to, there were introductions: this is Alice, this is Luna, this is Dudley. Everyone smiles with that Avada Kedavra to their head.

I never give my real name at support groups.

The little skeleton of a woman named Cho with the seat of her pants hanging down sad and empty, Cho tells me the worst thing about her brain imps was no one would have sex with her. Here she was, so close to death that her life insurance policy had paid off with seventy-five thousand galleons, and all Cho wanted was to get laid for the last time.

Not intimacy, sex.

What does a guy say? What can you say, I mean.

All this dying had started with Cho being a little tired, and now Cho was too bored to go in for treatment. Pornographic paintings, she had moving pornographic paintings on the ceiling at home in her apartment.

Cho had pornographic picutures, if I was interested. Succubus scent. Goblin grease.

Normal times, I'd be sporting an erection. Our Cho, however, is a skeleton dipped in yellow wax.

Cho looking the way she is, I am nothing. Not even nothing. Still, Cho's shoulder pokes mine when we sit around a circle on the shag carpet. We close our eyes. This was Cho's turn to lead us in guided meditation, and she talked us into the garden of serenity. Cho talked us up the hill to the castle of seven doors. Inside the castle were the seven doors, the green door, the yellow door, the orange door, and Cho talked us through opening each door, the blue door, the red door, the white door, and finding what was there.

Eyes closed, we imagined our pain as a ball of white healing light floating around our feet and rising to our knees, our waist, our chest. Our chakras opening. The heart chakra. The head chakra. Cho talked us into caves where we met our power animal. Mine was a basilisk, and it lived in a sewer.

Slime covered the floor of the sewer, and the basilisk said, slide. Without any effort, we slid through tunnels and galleries.

Then it was time to hug.

Open your eyes.

This was therapeutic physical contact, Cho said. We should all choose a partner. Cho threw herself around my head and cried. She had a bondage elf at home, and cried. Cho had oils and handcuffs, and cried as I watched the second hand on my watch go around eleven times.

So I didn't cry at my first support group, two years ago. I didn't cry at my second or my third support group, either. I didn't cry at blood imps or bowel distensions or thaumaturgic brain dementia.

This is how it is with insomnia. Everything is so far away, a copy of a copy of a copy. The insomnia distance of everything, you can't touch anything and nothing can touch you.

Then there was Ron. The first time I went to testicular curses, Ron the big moosie, the big cheesebread moved in on top of me in Remaining Wizards Together and started crying. The big moosie treed right across the room when it was hug time, his arms at his sides, his shoulders rounded. His big moosie chin on his chest, his eyes already shrink-wrapped in tears. Shuffling his feet, knees together invisible steps, Ron slid across the basement floor to heave himself on me.

Ron pancaked down on me.

Ron's big arms wrapped around me.

--

BIG RON WAS A POLYJUICER, he said. Chugging polyjuice potion for kicks, playing pranks on people for fun, seeing how women lived, stuff like that. He had a side business as a private investigator, using the polyjuice for undercover work. He'd been on the wizard's wireless and in the newspaper, and had I seen him in the Daily Prophet, ever? He also sold the stuff to people under the counter, strictly small-time stuff, he said. His three wives divorced him when each found out, he said.

Strangers with this kind of honesty make me go a big rubbery one, if you know what I mean.

Ron didn't know. Maybe only one of his huevos had ever descended, and he knew this was a risk factor. Ron told me about postoperative hormone potions.

A lot of polyjuicers chugging to much juice would get what they called bitch tits.

I had to ask what Ron meant by huevos.

Huevos, Ron said. Gonads. Nuts. Jewels. Testes. Balls. In Mexico, where you buy your chupacabra bladders, they call them "eggs."

Divorce, divorce, divorce, Ron said and showed me a wallet photo of himself in the body of a big, muscled, 300 pound brute, collecting shakedown money from a tavern owner in Knockturn Alley. It's a dangerous and stupid way to live, Ron said, but when you're in the body of somebody else, seeing, smelling, _feeling_ things differently than you ever have before, wearing somebody else's skin and experiencing the most mundane things in an entirely different fashion, you're blind from the rush, and deaf to the people mentioning how you're acting odd, maybe you have a fever, and I always thought you were left handed?

This is better than real life.

Fast-forward, Ron said, to the cancer. Then he was bankrupt. He had two grown kids who wouldn't return his calls.

The cure for bitch tits was for the doctor to cut up under the pectorals and drain any fluid.

This was all I remember because then Ron was closing in around me with his arms, and his head was folding down to cover me. Then I was lost inside oblivion, dark and silent and complete, and when I finally stepped away from his soft chest, the front of Ron's robe was a wet mask of how I looked crying.

That was two years ago, at my first night with Remaining Wizards Together.

At almost every meeting since then, Big Ron has made me cry.

I never went back to Madame Pomfrey. I never chewed the valerian root.

This was freedom. Losing all hope was freedom. If I didn't say anything, people in a group assumed the worst. They cried harder. I cried harder. Look up into the stars and you're gone.

Walking home after a support group, I felt more alive than I'd ever felt. I wasn't host to cancer or blood parasites; I was the little warm center that the life of the world crowded around.

And I slept. Babies don't sleep this well.

Every evening, I died, and every evening, I was born.

Resurrected.

Until tonight, two years of success until tonight, because I can't cry with this woman watching me. Because I can't hit bottom, I can't be saved. My tongue thinks it has flocked wallpaper, I'm biting the inside of my mouth so much. I haven't slept in four days.

With her watching, I'm a liar. She's a fake. She's the liar. At the introductions tonight, we introduced ourselves: I'm Ron, I'm Seamus, I'm Harold, I'm William.

I never give my real name.

"'This is cancer, right?" she said.

Then she said, "Well, hi, I'm Ginny Weasley."

Nobody ever told Ginny what kind of cancer. Then we were all busy cradling our inner child.

The man still crying against her neck, Ginny takes another drag on her cigarette.

I watch her from between Ron's shuddering tits.

To Ginny I'm a fake. Since the second night I saw her, I can't sleep. Still, I was the first fake, unless, maybe all these people are faking with their lesions and their coughs and tumors, even Big Ron, the big moosie. The big cheesebread.

Would you just look at his sculpted hair.

Ginny smokes and rolls her eyes now.

In this one moment, Ginny's lie reflects my lie, and all I can see are lies. In the middle of all their truth. Everyone clinging and risking to share their worst fear, that their death is coming head-on and the tip of a wand is pressed against the back of their throats. Well, Ginny is smoking and rolling her eyes, and me, I'm buried under a sobbing carpet, and all of a sudden even death and dying rank right down there with Frieda's Fade-Away Flowers as a non-event.

"Ron," I say, "you're crushing me." I try to whisper, then I don't. "Ron." I try to keep my voice down, then I'm yelling. "Ron, I have to go to the can."

A mirror hangs over the sink in the bathroom. If the pattern holds, I'll see Ginny Weasley at Above and Beyond, the blood imp group. Ginny will be there. Of course, Ginny will be there, and what I'll do is sit next to her. And after the introductions and the guided meditation, the seven doors of the palace, the white healing ball of light, after we open our chakras, when it comes time to hug, I'll grab the little bitch.

Her arms squeezed tight against her sides, and my lips pressed against her ear, I'll say, Ginny, you big fake, you get out.

This is the one real thing in my life, and you're wrecking it.

You big tourist.

The next time we meet, I'll say, Ginny, I can't sleep with you here. I need this. Get out.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

You wake up at Paris International.

Every turn and curve, when the bus leaned too much to one side, I prayed or a crash. That moment cures my insomnia with narcolepsy when we might die helpless and packed human tobacco in the triple-decker.

This is how I met Lord Voldemort.

You wake up at Aberdeen.

You wake up at Madrid.

You wake up at Istanbul.

Voldemort worked part-time as a Memory Charmer. Because of his nature, Voldemort could only work night jobs. If a Charmer called in sick, the union called Voldemort.

Some people are night people. Some people are day people. I could only work a day job.

You wake up at Aberdeen.

Life insurance pays off triple if you die on a business trip. I prayed for a spell failure. I prayed for the disruption of Sidney's Sudden Stoppage Spell so we would slam into a Muggle courthouse at a thousand miles an hour. A disruption of the Somebody Else's Problem Enchantment that kept the Muggle drivers from noticing the ridiculous triple-decker barrelling down their highway, weaving in and out of traffic and going the wrong way. On departure, as the bus raced out the terminal and into the Muggle's road system, with the seats in full upright position and our beds sliding around like billiards on a pool table during an earthquake and all personal carry-on baggage in the overhead compartment, I prayed for a crash.

You wake up at York.

With the Memory Charmers, Voldemort would modify the memories of Muggles who had glimpses of the wizarding world. A game of Quidditch goes out of control, a troll appears in downtown London, a witch flies drunk on her broom in broad daylight. These things have to be kept under wraps. A flick of the wand, a muttered incantation, and the Muggle's memory is erased.

I know this because Voldemort knows this.

Walking from point A to point B, with so much on your mind you don't think about where you're going. Your feet move out of instinct, eyes staring blankly at nothing, and your immediate surroundings are the last thing on your mind. You blink, and you're at work, home, school. Where did the time go? Seems like it just vanished. That's what it feels like to have your memory modified by the Charmers.

You wake up at Munich.

I study the people on the laminated Knight Bus safety card. A witch floats in the ocean, her brown hair spread out behind her, her pillow clutched to her chest. The eyes are wide open, but the woman doesn't smile or frown. In another picture, people calm as Befuddled cows reach up from their seats toward oxygen masks sprung out of the ceiling.

This must be an emergency.

Oh.

We've lost thaumaturgical integrity.

You wake up, and you're at Oslo.

Voldemort's a banquet waiter, waiting tables at a hotel, downtown, and Voldemort's a Memory Charmer with the Memory Charmer's union. I don't know how long Voldemort had been working on all those nights I couldn't sleep.

Sometimes, with training, you can pinpoint the part in your memory where it is modified. If it's a rush job, or you have a particularly strong will, things will seem disjointed. Images, sounds, smells will leak through. The most common form of leakage is the memory of the charm being cast. A pair of white spots of light leaping from a wand to your eyes. If you ever think you saw something like this darting across the sky, focus your memories around that point, but carefully. You don't want to miss it.

"Mana burns," they're called in the business.

The first white dot, this is the Obliviate charm. It wipes your memory to a blank, to give a fresh slate for the second spell.

The second white dot is the new memory. It's not practical to customize every single Memory Charm, so usually it's a self-guided spell. It highlights and emphasizes the mundane aspects of what was going on before and after the Oblivate charm. Like swirling wet paint around on a canvas, or going over a sketch in charcoal, everything gets jumbled together. Immediately after the casting, this can manifest itself as the feeling of deja-vu. That's the charm doing a brute-force cut-and-paste job on your memory. You think it's happened before, because it has.

Even if your memory gets reverted back to the way it originally was, the spots of light are still there. The spell was cast, after all.

A Muggle who sees something he shouldn't gets his mind mixed up and rearranged, and he suddenly blinks and he's standing at the front door to his house, looking at his watch and wondering where his mind was the whole ride home. He shakes his head, and goes in to his wife and kids, and completely forgets about his momentary confusion, because that's another side effect of the Memory Charm. It's so mundane and normal, it makes itself disappear.

And life goes on.

Nobody in the Muggle world has any idea.

You wake up at Tours.

The charm of traveling is everywhere I go, tiny life. I go to the hotel, tiny soap, tiny shampoos, single-serving butter, tiny mouthwash and a single-use toothbrush. Dinner arrives, a miniature do-it-yourself Chicken Cordon Bleu hobby kit, sort of a put-it together project to keep you busy.

The driver has turned on the seat-belt sign, and we would ask you to refrain from moving about the cabin.

You wake up at Dublin.

What else a Charmer shouldn't do: Voldemort implants sex into a Muggle's memory. You're a charmer and you're tired and angry, but mostly you're bored so you start by taking a single lustful memory of your own, that you personally have experienced or seen in a pensieve, and you slip this flash of a lunging red penis or a yawning wet vagina closeup into Muggle's memory.

This is after a Muggle family witnessed a wizards' duel in the middle of the street, Peter Pettigrew being blown to pieces. In the third minute of the fake memory, just as they're arriving home, there's a flash of an erection.

Voldemort does this.

A single image in your memory can last as little as one-thousandth of a single second, but the effects can linger. That's how long the erection is. Stretching days, weeks, months, years ahead into the future, and no one sees it. Sometimes, it's uncovered during therapy, and the Muggles blame each other for it.

You wake up at Logan, again.

This is a terrible way to travel. I go to meetings my boss doesn't want to attend. I take notes. I'll get back to you.

--

Wherever I'm going, I'll be there to apply the formula. I'll keep the secret intact.

It's simple arithmancy.

It's a story problem.

If a new broomstick built by my company leaves London travelling north at 60 miles per hour, and the dorsal bristles stiffen up, and the broom crashes and burns killing the ten-year old orphan trying out for Seeker on the neighborhood Quiddich team, does my company initiate a recall?

You take the population of vehicles in the field (A) and multiply it by the probable rate of failure (B), then multiply the result by the average cost of an out-of-court settlement (C).

A times B times C equals X. This is what it will cost if we don't initiate a recall.

If X is greater than the cost of a recall, we recall the brooms and no one gets hurt.

If X is less than the cost of a recall, then we don't recall.

Everywhere I go, there's the burned-up crumpled-up stick of a broom waiting for me. I know where all the skeletons are. Consider this my job security.

Hotel time, restaurant food. Everywhere I go, I make tiny friendships with the people sitting beside me from Cardiff to Madrid to Rejkavik.

What I am is a recall campaign coordinator, I tell the single-serving friend sitting next to me, but I'm working toward a career as a dishwasher.

You wake up at London, again.

--

Voldemort spliced a penis into all the memories after that. Usually, close-ups, or a Grand Canyon vagina with an echo, twitching with blood pressure as they resumed their boring Muggle lives. Nobody complained. People ate and drank, but the evening wasn't the same. People feel sick or start to cry and don't know why. Only a hummingbird could have caught Voldemort at work.

You wake up in Venice.

I melt and swell at the moment of arrival when the bus slams to a stop but inertia hangs about for a split second in the decision to keep trying to move the bus into the building or be shunted off into a pocket dimension created by the enchantment. For this moment, nothing matters. Look up into the stars and you're gone. Not your luggage. Nothing matters. Not your bad breath. The windows are dark outside and the brakes are squealing. Inertia decides to tell the wizarding world to go hang, and you will never have to file another expense account claim. Receipt required for items over twenty-five sickles. You will never have to get another haircut.

A thud, and the gentle bump of inertia going elsewhere. The staccato of a hundred seatbelt buckles snapping open, and the single-use friend you almost died sitting next to says:

I hope you make your connection.

Yeah, me too.

And this is how long your moment lasted. And life goes on.

And somehow, by accident, Voldemort and I met.

ALL THE USUAL blood imps are here, tonight. Above and Beyond always gets a big turnout. This is Peter. This is Regulus. This is Marsha.

Hi.

The introductions, everybody, this is Ginny Weasley, and this is her first time with us.

Hi, Ginny.

At Above and Beyond, we start with the Catch-Up Rap. The group isn't called Impish Blood Parasites. You'll never hear anyone say "parasite." Everybody is always getting better. Oh, this new medication. Everyone's always just turned the corner. Still, everywhere, there's the squint of a five-day headache. A woman wipes at involuntary tears. Everyone gets a name tag, and people you've met every Tuesday night for a year, they come at you, handshake hand ready and their eyes on your name tag.

I don't believe we've met.

No one will ever say imp. They'll say, agent.

They don't say cure. They'll say, treatment.

In Catch-Up Rap, someone will say how the agent has spread into his spinal column and now all of a sudden he'll have no control of his left hand. The agent, someone will say, has dried the lining of his brain so now the brain pulls away from the inside of his skull, causing seizures.

The last time I was here, the woman named Cho announced the only good news she had. Cho pushed herself to her feet against the wooden arms of her chair and said she no longer had any fear of death.

Tonight, after the introductions and Catch-Up Rap, a girl I don't know, with a name tag that says Kim, says she's Cho's sister and that at two in the morning last Tuesday, Cho finally died.

Oh, this should be so sweet. For two years, Cho's been crying in my arms during hug time, and now she's dead, dead in the ground, dead in an urn, mausoleum, columbarium. Oh, the proof that one day you're thinking and hauling yourself around, and the next, you're cold fertilizer, worm buffet. This is the amazing miracle of death, and it should be so sweet if it weren't for, oh, that one.

Ginny.

Oh, and Ginny's looking at me again, singled out among all the blood imps.

Liar.

Faker.

Ginny's the faker. You're the faker. Everyone around when they wince or twitch and fall down barking and the crotch of their jeans turns dark blue, well, it's all just a big act.

Guided meditation all of a sudden won't take me anywhere, tonight. Behind each of the seven palace doors, the green door, the orange door, Ginny. The blue door, Ginny stands there. Liar. In the guided meditation through the cave of my power animal, my power animal is Ginny. Smoking her cigarette, Ginny, rolling her eyes. Liar. Black hair and pillowy French lips. Faker. Italian dark leather sofa lips. You can't escape.

Cho was the genuine article.

Cho was the way Sybll Trelawney's skeleton would look if you made it smile and walk around a party being extra special nice to everyone. Picture Cho's popular skeleton the size of an insect, running through the vaults and galleries of her innards at two in the morning. Her pulse a siren overhead, announcing: Prepare for death in ten, in nine, in eight seconds. Death will commence in seven, six . . .

Oh, this should be so sweet, the remembered warm jumble of Cho still in my arms and Cho dead somewhere.

But no, I'm watched by Ginny.

In guided meditation, I open my arms to receive my inner child, and the child is Ginny smoking her cigarette. No white healing ball of light. Liar. No chakras. Picture your chakras opening as flowers and at the center of each is a slow motion explosion of sweet light.

Liar.

My chakras stay closed.

When meditation ends, everyone is stretching and twisting their heads and pulling each other to their feet in preparation. Therapeutic physical contact. For the hug, I cross in three steps to stand against Ginny who looks up into my face as I watch everyone else for the cue.

Let's all, the cue comes, embrace someone near us.

My arms clamp around Ginny.

Pick someone special to you, tonight.

Ginny's cigarette hands are pinned to her waist.

Tell this someone how you feel.

Ginny doesn't have testicular cancer. Ginny doesn't have tuberculosis. She isn't dying. Okay in that brainy brain-food philosophy way, we're all dying, but Ginny isn't dying the way Cho was dying.

The cue comes, share yourself.

So, Ginny, how do you like them apples?

Share yourself completely.

So, Ginny, get out. Get out. Get out.

Go ahead and cry if you have to.

Ginny stares up at me. Her eyes are green. Her earlobes pucker around earring holes, no earrings. Her chapped lips are frosted with dead skin.

Go ahead and cry.

"You're not dying either," Ginny says.

Around us, couples stand sobbing, propped against each other.

"You tell on me," Ginny says, "and I'll tell on you."

Then we can split the week, I say. Ginny can have bone disease, blood imps, and tuberculosis. I'll keep testicular cancer, blood parasites, and organic brain dementia.

Ginny says, "What about ascending bowel curses?"

The girl has done her homework.

We'll split bowel curses. She gets it the first and third Sunday of every month.

"No," Ginny says. No, she wants it all. The cancers, the parasites. Ginny's eyes narrow. She never dreamed she could feel so marvelous. She actually felt alive. Her skin was clearing up. All her life, she never saw a dead person. There was no real sense of life because she had nothing to contrast it with. Oh, but now there was dying and death and loss and grief. Weeping and shuddering, terror and remorse. Now that she knows where we're all going, Ginny feels every moment of her life.

No, she wasn't leaving any group.

"Not and go back to the way life felt before," Ginny says. "I used to work in an old ghosts' home to feel good about myself, just the fact I was breathing. So what if I couldn't get a job in my field."

Then go back to your old ghosts' home, I say.

"Ghost homes are nothing compared to this," Ginny says. "Ghosts spend all their time

remembering when they were alive. Here, you have a real experience of death."

Couples around the two of us are drying their tears, sniffing, patting each other on the back and letting go.

We can't both come, I tell her.

"Then don't come." I need this. "Then visit ghosts." Everyone else has broken apart and they're joining hands for the closing prayer. I let Ginny go.

"How long have you been coming here?" The closing prayer. Two years. A man in the prayer circle takes my hand. A man takes Ginny's hand. These prayers start and usually, my breathing is blown. Oh, bless us. Oh, bless us in our anger and our fear.

"Two years?" Ginny tilts her head to whisper. Oh, bless us and hold us. Anyone who might've noticed me in two years has either died or recovered and never came back. Help us and help us. "Okay," Ginny says, "okay, okay, you can have testicular cancer." Big Ron the big cheesebread crying all over me. Thanks. Bring us to our destiny. Bring us peace. "Don't mention it."

"Maybe we should exchange Floo numbers?" I ask.

"Should we?" she says.

"In case we want to switch nights," I say.

"Okay." and she hands me a torn-off piece of parchment with her name and home scratched on it with a cheap quill.

This is how I met Ginny Weasley


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

The security task force wizard explained everything to me.

Throwers can ignore a ticking trunk. The security task force wizard, he called the goblin baggage handlers Throwers. Magical bombs don't tick. But a trunk that vibrates, the goblins, Throwers, have to call the Aurors.

How I came to live with Voldemort is because most Knight Buses have this policy about vibrating baggage.

My ride back from Dublin, I had everything in that one trunk. When you travel a lot, you learn to pack the same for every trip. Six black robes. Two black trousers. The bare minimum you need to survive.

Pocket sneakoscope.

Toothbrush.

Six pair underwear.

Six pair black socks.

It turns out, my trunk was vibrating on departure from Dublin, according to the security task force wizard, so the aurors brought it off the bus. Everything was in that trunk. My spare eyeglasses. One red tie with blue stripes. One blue tie with red stripes. These are regimental stripes, not club tie stripes. And one solid red tie.

A list of all these things used to hang on the inside of my bedroom door at home.

Home was a closet in a Muggle house in little Surrey, an area without another wizard within miles. I had the closet expanded, so the interior was roughly twice the size of the house that contained it, magically protected to keep the Muggles out and my potion fumes in. A foot of charmed concrete and Air Filtration Potion, there weren't any windows to open, so all thirty thousand airtight feet would smell like the last meal you cooked or your last trip to the bathroom.

Yeah, and there were butcher block countertops and non-flammable candle lighting.

Still, a foot of charmed conrete is important when the Muggle brat upstairs decides to have an all-night party with a hundred of his closest friends. Or when a volcanic blast of burning gas and debris that used to be your living room set and personal effects blows out the closet door, down the hall and through the back door to land on the gardenias in the back yard.

These things happen.

Everything, including your set of hand-blown green glass dishes with the tiny bubbles and imperfections, little bits of sand, proof they were crafted by the honest, simple, hard-working indigenous aboriginal elves of wherever, well, these dishes all get blown out by the blast. Picture the floor-to-ceiling tapestries blown out and flaming to shreds in the hot wind.

In the middle of Muggle Central, this stuff comes flaming and bashing and down in my Aunt's back yard.

Me, while I'm heading west, asleep at Mach 0.83 or 455 miles an hour, true ground, the WBI is bomb-squading my trunk on a vacated parking lot back at Dublin. Nine times out of ten, the security task force wizard says, the vibration is a pocket sneakoscope. This was my pocket sneakoscope. The other time, it's a vibrating dildo.

The security task force wizard told me this. This was at my destination, without my trunk, where I was about to cab it home and find my flannel sheets shredded on the ground.

Imagine, the task force wizard says, telling a passenger on arrival that a dildo kept her baggage on the East Coast. Sometimes it's even a man. It's airline policy not to imply ownership in the event of a dildo. Use the indefinite article.

A dildo.

Never your dildo.

Never, ever say the dildo accidentally turned itself on.

A dildo activated itself and created an emergency situation that required evacuating your baggage.

Rain was falling when I woke up for my connection in Liverpool.

Rain was falling when I woke up on our final approach to home.

An announcement told us to please take this opportunity to check around our seats for any personal belongings we might have left behind. Then the announcement said my name. Would I please meet with a Knight Bus representative waiting at the gate.

I set my watch back an hour, and it was still after midnight.

There was the Knight Bus representative at the gate, and there was the security task force wizard to say, ha, your pocket sneakoscope kept your checked trunk at Dublin. The task force wizard called the baggage goblins Throwers. Then he called them Rampers. To prove things could be worse, the guy told me at least it wasn't a dildo. Then, maybe because I'm a guy and he's a guy and it's one o'clock in the morning, maybe to make me laugh, the guy said industry slang for bus attendant was Space Waitress. Or Road Whore. It looked like the guy was wearing a driver's uniform, white shirt with little epaulets and a blue tie. My trunk had been cleared, he said, and would arrive the next day.

The security wizard asked my name and address and flue number, and then he asked me what was the difference between a condom and a driver's seat.

"You can only get one prick into a condom," he said.

I cabbed home on my last ten sickles.

The local Aurors had been asking a lot of questions, too.

My pocket sneakoscope, which wasn't a bomb, was still several hundred miles behind me.

Something which was a bomb, a big bomb, had blasted my clever Njurunda potions kit in the shape of a lime green yin and an orange yang that fit together to make a circle. Well they were splinters, now.

You buy stuff. You tell yourself, this is the last cauldron I will ever need in my life. Buy the cauldron, then for a couple years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you've got your cauldron issue handled. Then the right set of dishes.

Then the perfect bed. The wireless. The pensieve.

Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you.

Until I got home from the Knight Bus terminal.

A wizard from the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad steps out of the shadows to say, there's been an accident. The Aurors, they were here and asked a lot of questions.

The Aurors think maybe it was the fireplace. Maybe the connection to the Floo network didn't close properly after I left, and it left open, a thin stream of Conduction Gas, the volatile material that reacts to the Floo Powder and the verbalizations, the gas filling the closet from ceiling to floor in every room. The closet was thirty thousand square feet with high ceilings and for days and days the gas rose. The gas must've leaked until every room was full. When the rooms were filled to the floor, the salamander at the base of the stove hiccuped.

Detonation.

The closet door with it's anti-Muggle enchantments would've given, to let the force direct itself outward. If it hadn't, the entire closet's magical integrity would've been compromised, and number four, Privet Drive would have been a crater.

The wizard blew his nose and something went into his handkerchief with the good slap of a Bludger into a Seeker's face.

You could go up into the house, wizard said, but nobody could go into the closet. Auror's orders. They had been asking, did I have an old girlfriend who'd want to do this or did I make an enemy of somebody who had access to dynamite.

"It wasn't worth going in," the wizard said. "All that's left is the concrete shell."

VOLDEMORT IS SITTING IN a massive leather chaise recliner next to me on the Knight Bus, looking at the laminated safety card. The little cartoon woman on the card is squatting on the seat of her own chair, detaching the buoyant armrests and handing them to other wizards and witches floating in the water around her.

"If you are seated in an overstuffed chair," Voldemort reads. "And you feel you would be unable to perform the duties listed on the safety card, please ask the bus attendant to reseat you."

"It's a lot of responsibility", I say. He turns to me.

"Want to switch seats?"

I'm not sure I'm the man for that job.

"An exit-door procedure at 300 miles an hour. Mm-hmm. The illusion of safety."

Yeah, I guess so.

"You know why they put Bubble-head charms on the headrests?" he asks, indicating the runes subtly woven into the piece of doily behind my head.

So you can breathe. Voldemort grins.

"These Bubble-head charms contain pure oxygen. Oxygen gets you high. In a catastrophic emergency, you're taking giant, panicked breaths. Suddenly, you become euphoric, docile, you accept your fate."

Voldemort holds up the card, pointing at the vacant expression on the witch who is trying to detach the back part of her lounger.

"Emergency water landing, 300 miles an hour. Blank faces – calm as Memory-charmed Muggles."

That's an... interesting theory, I manage. What do you do?

"Why? So you can pretend you're interested?" I laugh.

"You have a kind of sick desperation in your laugh," he says.

Voldemort reaches under his seat and lifts a travel cauldron. It's the exact same one as mine. He undoes the latches on the sides, snapping the lid open. Inside, in neat little piles, are dozens of pinkish-white bricks wrapped in paper and tied with string.

"Soap." he says.

Sorry?

"I make and sell soap. The yardstick of civilization."

He pulls a card out of the cauldron, and hands it to me. "THE GRIMMAULD PLACE SOAP COMPANY." And this is how I met--

Lord Voldemort.

"Did you know if you mixed equal parts lamp oil and frozen pumpkin juice concentrate, you could make napalm?"

No, I didn't know that. Is that true?

Voldemort grins. "That's right. One can make all kinds of explosives using simple household items."

Really?

"If one were so inclined."

Voldemort snaps the lid of the cauldron back on.

"Voldemort, you are by far the most interesting single-serving friend I've met."

Voldemort stares at me for a moment. I lean in. See, obviously, everything on a plane is single-serving, even-

"Oh no, I get it. It's very clever." Voldemort cuts me off, grinning. "How's that working out for you?"

What?

"Being clever."

As I said, the most interesting single-serving friend ever. Great, I tell him.

"Keep it up then. Right up."

He stands, grabs his cauldron, and heads for the stairs in back leading further up the Knight Bus. A movement of the curtain, and he's gone.

How I came to live with Voldemort is that the Knight Bus has that policy about vibrating luggage.

Standing on the Muggle lawn, my Aunt and Uncle and cousin sitting Stupefied against the back fence, everything that I is or was up in flames or scattered around on the ground around me, my hands find a crumpled piece of parchment in a side pocket. Scribbled on it in her untidy handwriting is "Ginny" and "Gringotts Hotel - 8G".

The fireplace that the Muggles had had been temporarily connected to the Floo network. The wizard was milling around in the hallway, and lent me a bag of powder. I tossed a pinch in, and said quietly, "Gringott's Hotel. 8G".

I didn't stick my face in all the way, and could only make out dimly what was on the other side. After a moment, a vision of Ginny's face appeared in the flames. I backed away from the fireplace as she looked around. It took her a minute to focus her eyes, and I felt myself backing away and to the side.

"Yeah?" she coughed into the air.

I saw the fireball, pouring out onto the lawn.

"I can hear you breathing, you sick fu--" the connection broke, the last of the Floo powder used up.

I got another pinch of Floo powder and called Voldemort

THE ALLEY BEHIND THE Three Broomsticks smelled of old pumpkin juice, vomit, and house elf urine. Muggle alleys smell like this, too, though without the tangy scent of the house elf urine. Places like this never got the high-quality elves that the rich pureblood families had, and a lot of them had problems. The kind of problem you get through slave labor conditions, forced breeding for desired traits, and a lack of proper clothing. House elves peeing up and out through the basement windows is one of them. Most of the time the urine would dribble back down into the basement. House elves work hard, but none of them are very bright.

Voldemort and I stepped out into the alley, holding a pair of mugs smuggled through the back door. I look up at the stars, and it's getting late.

Oh, God, it's late. Hey, thanks for the beer.

"Yeah, man."

I should find a room. There were plenty of them in the area. Boarding houses and pubs with rooms, wizard-friendly.

"What?"

What?

"Like, a bed and breakfast?"

Yeah.

"Just ask it, man."

What are you talking about?

"Three pitchers of ale and you still can't ask." My mug still has an inch left, swirling in the bottom.

What?

"You called me so you could have a place to stay."

Hey, no, no, no,

"Yes you did. Just ask. Cut the foreplay and just ask, man."

Would that be a problem?

"Is it a problem for you to ask?"

Can I stay at your place?

"Yeah." He plucks the mug from my hand, then turns down the alley and sets it down on the cobblestones, right next to his.

Thanks.

"But I want you to do me one favor."

Yeah, sure.

"I want you to hex me as hard as you can."


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

WHEN WE INVENTED Wizard Club, Voldemort and I, neither of us had ever been in a duel before. If you've never been in a duel, you wonder. About getting hurt, about what you're capable of doing against another wizard. I was the first guy Voldemort ever felt safe enough to ask, and we were both drunk in a tavern where no one would care so Voldemort said, "I want you to do me a favor. I want you to hex me as hard as you can."

I didn't want to, but Voldemort explained it all, about not wanting to die without any scars, about being tired of watching only professionals duel, and wanting to know more about himself.

About self-destruction.

At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.

Standing outside in the alley, the orange-scented tang of house elf piss hanging in the air, I asked if Voldemort wanted it in the face or in the stomach.

Voldemort said, "Surprise me."

I said I had never hit anybody with a spell.

Voldemort said, "So go crazy, man."

I said, close your eyes.

Voldemort said, "No."

Like every guy on his first night in Wizard Club, I breathed in, waved my wand, and shot out a burst of greenish-red energy at Voldemort's jaw like in every story we'd ever heard, and me, my spell connected with the side of Voldemort's neck. Pus-filled buboes erupted along his neck and shoulder, oozing a nasty yellow pus that smelled like something from Herbology class.

Voldemort said, "Motherfucker! Pimple Pox!"

I said, well, Jesus, I'm sorry.

Voldemort said, "Ow, Christ… Why the pox, man?"

I said, guess I fucked it up.

Voldemort said, "Naw, it was perfect," and blasted me, straight on, bam, just like a Weasley Brothers' boxing glove on a spring from their joke shop, right in the middle of my chest and I fell back against a barrel, puking slugs all over myself, and retching like a firstyear taking his first sip of Hogwarts Hooch. We both stood there, Voldemort rubbing the side of his neck, hands slick with pus, and me holding a hand on my chest, both of us knowing we'd gotten somewhere we'd never been and like Ron's living chess set, we were still alive and wanted to see how far we could take this thing and still be alive.

Voldemort said, "Cool."

I said, hex me again.

Voldemort said, "No, you hex me."

So I blasted him, a girl's stunning spell wide to right under his ear, and Voldemort shoved into me and hit me with a contact spell, giving me third-degree sunburns along my wand arm. What happened next and after that didn't happen in words, but the tavern closed and people came out and shouted around us in the alley.

I DON'T KNOW HOW Voldemort found number twelve, Grimmauld Place, but he said he'd been there for a year. It looked like it was waiting to be torn down. Stuffed house elf heads lined the walls, the final rewards for loyal servants. Most of the windows were boarded up. Shrieks came from a picture frame, muffled by several feet of plywood nailed and screwed over it.

There was no lock on the front door from when the Aurors or whoever kicked it in. The stairs were ready to collapse. There was a boggart in the second-floor bedroom. I don't know if Voldemort owned the place, or was squatting. Neither would have surprised me. The entire thaumaturgical field was a mess, fluctuations and random discharges making the simplest spell a risky, difficult chore. Casting a spell in the kitchen made an enchantment in the bedroom fizzle out. Voldemort did a lot of hands-on, Muggle work to keep things up.

We carry around candles. It has pantries bigger on the inside than out, screened sleeping porches that looked out onto beachfronts on the other side of the world, and stained-glass windows with subjects that moved constantly moved with a grating, crackling noise. There are bay windows with window seats in the parlor.

There were no neighbors. Just some warehouses, a machine shop, and a factory, all Muggle, that fart smelling steam, the hamster cage of wood chips. Voldemort didn't bother with enchanting the place to guard it from Muggles. The location and mana field did all the work for him.

At night, Voldemort and I were alone for half a mile in every direction. The Improper Use of Magic Office had long ago learned to ignore anything in the vicinity of Grimmauld Place. We were free to let loose with magic in a way a wizard never could, in either the wizard or Muggle worlds. Hexes and charms and curses and enchantments streaked through the air like little sparklers.

Rain trickled down through the plaster and the light fixtures. The shingles on the roof blister, buckle, curl, and the rain comes through and collects on top of the ceiling plaster and drips down through the candelabras. Everything wooden swelled and shrunk. Everywhere were rusted nails to snag your elbow on, old spell components rotting in dark corners. The previous occupant had been a bit of a shut-in.

Before the dawn of time, there was an owner who collected lifetime stacks of the

Witch Weekly and Quibbler, the mildewed and warped witches and wizards on the covers hiding under title cards, peeking around edges. Big teetering stacks of magazines that get taller every time it rains. Voldemort says the last tenant used to fold the glossy magazine pages for demonweed wrappers. There's nine layers of wallpaper swelling on the dining-room walls, flowers under stripes under flowers under birds under grasscloth, all gently rustling with vague life as the magic slowly fades out of them.

There were an entire series of articles, written by a wizard who had animated the organs donated by a dozen witches and wizards. The brownish glistening livers, thick ropy entrails, and quivering eyeballs given energy to exist and a mind to understand and a voice to speak.

Listen to some of these. I am Seamus' lungs. I am Petunia's nipple. I am Harry's colon. Voldemort laughed.

"I get cancer. I kill Harry."

IT WAS RIGHT IN everyone's face. Voldemort and I just made it visible. It was on the tip of everyone's tongue. Voldemort and I just gave it a name.

Saturday night, Voldemort and I go into the Three Broomsticks. It's time. Lights up. Time to go home. The ones who left, who didn't know, drop their money and shuffle out the front door. Coming in from the back, and filing straight down into the basement through the stairwell behind the kitchen, are the ones who do know.

The basement has a massive pentagram etched in the floor, burned by acid, lined over with chalk to keep the spells in. At the beginning of the night it's barely visible, but by the time morning comes it's crackling with light, spells and curses and jinxes being put into it's field faster than it can dissipate safely. Every week, Voldemort would stand in the center, and give the rules he and I decided.

The first rule of Wizard Club is, you do not talk about Wizard Club.

The second rule of Wizard Club is, you DO NOT TALK about Wizard Club.

Third rule of Wizard Club, someone yells stop, goes limp, taps out, the duel is over.

Fourth rule, only two guys to a duel.

Fifth rule, one duel at a time, fellas.

Sixth rule, no robe, no shoes, no Unforgiveables.

Seventh rule: Duels will go on as long as they have to.

And the eighth and final rule, if this is your first night at Wizard Club, you have to duel.

And so it was on.

This kid from work, Colin Creevy, couldn't remember if you ordered quills with eagle feathers or ostrich. But he was a god for ten minutes, when he trounced the maitre'd of a local restaurant.

Sometimes all you could hear were the flat, hard packing sounds over the yelling, the sizzle and crackle of jinxes and curses, or the wet choke when someone caught their breath long enough to yell

Stop.

You weren't alive anywhere like you were there. But wizard club only exists in the hours between when wizard club starts and wizard club ends. Even if I could tell someone they had a good duel, I wouldn't be talking to the same wizard. Who you were in wizard club is not who you were in the rest of the world. A guy came to wizard club for the first time, his ass was a wad of cookie dough. After a few weeks, he was carved out of wood.

Wizard club wasn't about winning or losing. It wasn't about words. When the duel was over, nothing was solved. But nothing mattered.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

ONE MORNING, THERE'S the dead jellyfish of a used condom floating in the toilet.

This is how Voldemort meets Ginny.

All night long, I dreamed I was humping Ginny Weasley. Ginny Weasley smoking her cigarette. Ginny Weasley rolling her eyes. I wake up alone in my own bed, and the door to Voldemort's room is closed. The door to Voldemort's room is never closed. All night, it was raining.

I've been living with Voldemort about a month.

I am Harry's White Knuckles.

How could Voldemort not fall for that. The night before last, Voldemort sat up alone, splicing sex organs into little Timmy's trolley ride.

How could I compete for Voldemort's attention.

I am Harry's Enraged, Inflamed Sense of Rejection.

What's worse is this is all my fault. After I went to sleep last night, Voldemort tells me he came home from his shift as a banquet waiter, and Ginny called on the Floo network from the Gringott Hotel. This was it, Ginny said. The tunnel, the light leading her down the tunnel. The death experience was so cool, Ginny wanted me to hear her describe it as she lifted out of her body and floated up.

Ginny didn't know if her spirit could use Floo powder, but she wanted someone to at least hear her last breath. No, but no, Voldemort answers the fireplace and misunderstands the whole situation. They've never met so Voldemort thinks it's a bad thing that Ginny is about to die.

It's nothing of the kind.

This is none of Voldemort's business, but Voldemort calls the Aurors and Voldemort races over to the Gringott Hotel.

Now, according to the ancient Chinese custom we all learned from the Muggles, Voldemort is responsible for Ginny, forever, because Voldemort saved Ginny's life.

If I had only wasted a couple of minutes and gone over to watch Ginny die, then none of this would have happened.

Voldemort tells me how Ginny lives in room 8G, on the top floor of the Gringott Hotel, up eight flights of stairs and down a noisy hallway with canned wireless laughter coming through the doors. Every couple seconds an actress screams or actors die screaming in a rattle of curses. Voldemort gets to the end of the hallway and even before he knocks, a thin, buttermilk sallow arm slingshots out the door of room 8G, grabs his wrist, and yanks Voldemort inside.

I bury myself in a Witch's Digest.

Even as Ginny yanks Voldemort into her room, Voldemort can hear the popping and cracking of Disapparations out in front of the Gringott Hotel. On the dresser, there's a warm and slightly pulsing dildo made of the same soft pink plastic as a million Quidditch player models, and for a moment, Voldemort can picture millions of baby dolls and Viktor Krums and dildos injection-molded and coming out of the same assembly cauldron in Taiwan.

Ginny looks at Voldemort looking at her dildo, and she rolls her eyes and says, "Don't be afraid. It's not a threat to you."

Ginny shoves Voldemort back out into the hallway, and she says she's sorry, but he shouldn't have called the Aurors and that's probably the Aurors downstairs right now.

In the hallway, Ginny locks the door to 8G and shoves Voldemort toward the stairs. On the stairs, Voldemort and Ginny flatten against the wall as Aurors and Healers charge by with potions, asking which door will be 8G.

Ginny tells them the door at the end of the hall.

Ginny shouts to the Aurors that the girl who lives in 8G used to be a lovely charming girl, but the girl is a monster bitch monster. The girl is infectious human waste, and she's confused and afraid to commit to the wrong thing so she won't commit to anything. "Good luck trying to save _her!_" Ginny shouts.

The police pile up at the locked door to 8G, and Ginny and Voldemort hurry down to the lobby. Behind them, a policeman is yelling at the door:

"Let us help you! Miss Weasley, you have every reason to live! Just let us in, Ginny, and we can help you with your problems!"

Ginny and Voldemort rushed out into the street. Voldemort grabbed Ginny by the arm and prepared to Apparate with her, and high up on the eighth floor of the hotel, Voldemort could see shadows moving back and forth across the windows of Ginny's room.

Back in Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, Ginny tells Voldemort he has to keep her up all night. If Ginny ever falls asleep, she'll die.

Long story short, now Ginny's out to ruin another part of my life. Ever since college, I make friends. They get married. I lose friends.

Fine.

Neat, I say.

Voldemort asks, is this a problem for me?

I am Harry's Clenching Bowels.

No, I say, it's fine.

Put a wand to my head and paint the wall with my brains.

Then one afternoon the fireplace activates and an Auror's scraggly face is projected into the embers and flames, staring out at me, asking if I have time to talk. One of his eyes is missing, replaced by a spinning blue orb that twirls around and around like a heavily greased ball bearing.

"I'm Inspector Moody, an Auror working with the Arson office. We have some new information about the "incident" at your former closet." His face crackles and sputters. We rarely use the Floo connection here, too much interference from the damaged thaumaturgical field. Even the talking head connection is straining the enchantments, and I tell Inspector Moody so. I wonder how long it'll hold.

"That's all right. This won't take long", he says. "I don't know if you're aware, but _someone_ sprayed ice weasel venom into your front door lock, then tapped it with a silver chisel to shatter the cylinder without breaking the other enchantments."

No, I wasn't aware of that at all, I tell him.

I am Harry's cold sweat.

"Does that sound strange to you?" he asks, and I can see his blue eye stop swiveling and fix on me for a moment. I wonder if it works through the Floo connection.

Uh, yes sir, very strange, I tell him.

"The demon powder..."

Demon powder?

"...left a green and purple manachromatic residue on the surviving enchantments. Do you know what this means?"

No, what does this mean?

"It was homemade," he says. The other eye is swiveling around again. I am Harry's shocked silence.

"See, _whoever_ set this homemade demon powder could've unstoppered the Floo network connection days before the actual explosion. The Conduction Gas was just a detonator."

Who could have done such a thing? I ask him.

"I'll ask the questions," he growls at me. His embery, ashy face begins to sputter out. I think the mana field is starting to give. There's movement in the corner of my eye, and I look up to see Voldemort, dancing around naked except for a ratty pair of sweatpants and an old wizard's hat, standing in the doorway to the kitchen, waving his wand around. I can see him, but Inspector Moody can't. Words start streaming out of Voldemort's wand as he waves it around.

_Tell him..._

"Are you paying attention, sonny?" Moody barks. I look him in the eyes as best I can, watching Voldemort spinning words into the air out of the corner of my eye.

_Tell him the liberator who destroyed my property has realigned my paradigm of perception_ floats out of the kitchen and over the fireplace, over the burning head of Inspector Moody.

Inspector, it's just a little hard to know what to make of all this, I say, ignoring the words floating above Moody's head.

"Have you recently made enemies with any wizards who might have access to homemade Demon Powder?"

Enemies?

More words float out of the kitchen. _I reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possession!_

"Son, this is serious" Moody growls. I know it's serious, I tell him. "I mean that", he says.

The embers are beginning to fall in on themselves. The magic is starting to fade, and I trust that he can see me about as well as I can see him. I get down on my knees in front of the fireplace, and scrunch up my face.

Yes, it's VERY serious, I tell him. Look, nobody takes this more seriously than me. That closet was my LIFE! Okay? I loved every stick of furniture in that place. That was not just a bunch of stuff that got destroyed, it was ME! Okay?!

Inspector Moody makes a sour face. "Is this not a good time?"

Voldemort shoots more words stream out of the kitchen. _Tell him you fucking did it! _I try to ignore them, and more words come flying out, crashing into the others and mashing up against each other. _Tell him you blew it up! That's what he wants to hear!_

The face of Moody has almost collapsed the Floo connection almost dead. "Are you still there?" he asks. I frown at his ashen face, the flickering eye moving around in its one socket.

Are you saying I'm a suspect? Moody laughs a short, insincere laugh.

"No, no. I may just have to talk to you a little further. How about you let me know if you leave town, okay?"

Okay.

And then the connection finally dies completely, Moody's misshapen head collapsing into a misshapen lump of ashes and coal and cinders spilling out onto the dirty sitting-room floor.

MY BOSS SENDS me home because of all the dried blood on my robes, and I am overjoyed.

The hole punched through my cheek doesn't ever heal. I'm going to work, and my punched-out eye sockets are two swollen-up black bagels around the little piss holes I have left to see through. Until today, it really pissed me off that I'd become this totally centered Zen Master and nobody had noticed. Still, I'm doing the little OWL thing. I write little HAIKU things and OWL them around to everyone. When I pass people in the hall at work, I get totally ZEN right in everyone's hostile little FACE.

Muggles flip a switch

Wizards need spells and potions

Enslaved to the wand.

What are we doing tonight, I ask Voldemort.

"Tonight we make soap. To make soap, first we render fat."

Voldemort and I are ducking and running and dodging the back of a massive building somewhere deep in London. I'm not sure if it's in the wizard district, and Voldemort isn't volunteering the information. "The salt balance has to be just right, so the best fat for making soap comes from humans."

Wait. Where are we?

"A liposuction clinic."

Growing up Muggle, you learn about these things that Muggles do to themselves so they can make themselves prettier. I throw up in my mouth a little and back at number twelve, Grimmauld Place the whole house is filling with the sick acrid stench of human material being processed into spell components. Not technically illegal, but not on the up-and-up, either.

Voldemort has a half-dozen cauldrons going at once, picked up secondhand from the used wizarding equipment store off Diagon Alley. Flakes of rust, odd mark their reasons for being retired or sold. Voldemort doesn't mind.

"This is a nonmagical process," he says. "Purely Muggle. It's good to know Muggle tricks."

This is about Ginny isn't it?

"Don't ever talk to her about me. Don't talk about me behind my back. Do you promise?" Voldemort says.

I promise.

Voldemort says, "If you ever mention me to her, you'll never see me again."

I promise.

"Promise?"

I promise.

Voldemort says, "Now remember, that was three times that you promised."

A layer of something thick and clear is collecting on top of the fat rendering in the cauldron.

"Don't worry," Voldemort says. "The clear layer is glycerin. You can mix the glycerin back in when you make soap. Or, you can skim the glycerin off."

Voldemort licks his lips, and turns my hands palm-down on his thigh, on the gummy flannel lap of his bathrobe.

"You can mix the glycerin with gillyweed to make demon powder," Voldemort says.

I breathe with my mouth open and say, demon powder.

He grabs his wand and mutters some incantation, then holds it like a quill and draws something on my forearm. I look down at it as he gets up. A flaming skull, with a serpent coming out through the mouth, a fanged tongue. The thick ink shines in the firelight.

"You can mix the demon powder nitroglycerin with sodium nitrate and sawdust to make dynamite," Voldemort says.

The ink shines wet on the back of my white hand.

Dynamite, I say, and sit back on my heels.

Voldemort pries the lid off the can of newt's blood. "You can blow up bridges," Voldemort says.

"You can mix the nitroglycerin with more nitric acid and beeswax and make gelatin explosives," Voldemort says.

"You could blow up a building, easy," Voldemort says.

Voldemort tilts the can of newt's blood an inch above the shining wet kiss on the back of my hand.

"This is a chemical burn," Voldemort says, "and it will hurt worse than you've ever been burned. Worse than a hundred cigarettes."

The skull shines on the back of my hand.

"You'll have a scar," Voldemort says.

"With enough soap," Voldemort says, "you could blow up the whole world. Now remember your promise."

And Voldemort pours the newt's blood.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Under the Three Broomsticks, Wizard Club is about to begin again. Voldemort is standing in the middle, surveying the men around him.

"I look around, look around. And I see a lot of new faces."

They begin to laugh, joke, hurrah. Voldemort cuts them off.

"Shut up. That means a lot of you have been breaking the first two rules of Wizard Club." That shuts them up. They look at each other. Voldemort begins to pace.

"I see in Wizard Club the strongest and smartest wizards who have ever lived. I see all this potential. Goddamnit, an entire generation modifying memories, reversing magical accidents, and hiding our very existence from the Muggles who swarm across the planet like a plague. The Muggles we once lorded over and now hide from, scurrying away from them like roaches from a lantern.

"The Ministry would expect us to keep this farce up indefinitely, and believe it can be done. They think that our magic and enchantments will always keep us hidden away from Muggles. They think that our spells and potions will keep us invisible, always a step ahead of the Muggles' science and technology. But it won't.

"And when the right Muggles find Diagon Alley, Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, there won't be enough Memory Charmers to keep the secret. Even if every able wizard picked up a wand, the word would spread faster than we could cast. And when the Muggles learn the truth, they will hate us. Fear us. Try to destroy us.

"We cannot allow that. We cannot allow them to have the first strike against us, and destroy both our worlds in the process. Instead of taking the intiative and bringing our world to theirs, the Ministry would have us hide behind enchantments and spells, until the day their world comes to ours. The legends and stories have told us that we would all grow up to be archwizards, lich-kings, and rulers of this world. We've had those illusions shattered. We think we won't. But I'm here to tell you, we will."

The crowd erupts into cheers. Voldemort is telling them what they want to hear, but also what they need to hear, what needs to be said, about a world of gods that hides from the mortals that populate it. That cave into fear and pressure, and hide from power that runs through their veins instead of seizing their birthright.

This week, there's something extra, Voldemort tells us. "I want you to get into a duel with someone. And I want you to lose."

The idea is to take some Fred on the street who's never been in a fight and recruit him. Let him experience winning for the first time in his life. Get him to explode. Give him permission to hex the crap out of you.

You can take it. If you win, you screwed up.

"What we have to do, people," Voldemort told the committee, "is remind these guys what kind of power they still have."

This is Voldemort's little pep talk. Then he opened each of the folded squares of paper in a cardboard box in front of him. This is how each committee proposes events for the upcoming week. Write the event on the blank parchment scroll. Tear off a square, fold it, and put it in the box. Voldemort checks out the proposals and throws out any bad ideas.

For each idea he throws out, Voldemort puts a folded blank into the box.

Then everyone in the takes a paper out of the box. The way Voldemort explained the process to me, if somebody draws a blank, he only has his regular homework to do that week.

If you draw a propoal, then you have to go the Muggle's Airplane Modeller's convention this weekend and make their models zoom around the hall on their own. Or slip a batch of Ton-Tongue Toffees into a shipment of Muggle chocolates to be distributed all over Westchester.

Nobody knows who draws a proposal, and nobody except Voldemort knows what all the proposals are and which are accepted and which proposals he throws in the trash.

Later that week, you might read in the Daily Prophet about an unidentified wizard, downtown, who let a crate of Blast-Ended Skrewts loose on the Muggle Underground, causing havoc and creating a nasty job for the Memory Modifiers.

You have to wonder. Was this a homework assignment you could've drawn?

The next Tuesday night, you'll be looking around the meeting under the one light in the black fight club basement, and you're still wondering who forced the horse and buggy into the fountain.

Who snuck into the art museum and animated the genatalia of Michelangelo's David?

Everybody gets their homework: lose duel a in public; and each member draws for a proposal.

I STEP INTO MY BOSS' OFFICE at work, making sure the wand is still in it's holster at my waist. He looks up from his ten-foot long scroll which spills out onto the floor, filled with facts and figures and little animated sketches of exploding brooms. A brown owl sits on a perch by the open window, snoring softly. His greasy black hair frames his face, falling lanky, and he fixes me with a baleful stare. My boss has never liked me, and even though I requested to be transferred out, he never allowed it. I think he liked to keep me here just so he could torment me.

We need to talk, I say.

He blinks, then sets his peacock-feather quill back in the inkwell, fixing me with a baleful glare, and begins to roll up the scroll.

"Okay. Where to begin? With your constant absenteeism? Your un-presentable appearance? You're up for review."

I am Harry's Complete Lack of Surprise.

"What?" he sneers.

Let's play pretend, I say. Let's pretend you're the Department of Magical Transport _Someone_ informs you that this company installs handles that have unreliable Sure-grip enchantments, air brakes that fail after a thousand miles, and propellant bristles that explode and burn people alive. What do you do?

His eyes widen in shock and outrage. "Are you threatening me?"

No--

He stands up, shaking with rage. "Get out of here! You're fired!"

I have a better solution. You keep me on payroll as an outside consultant and in exchange for my salary, my job will be to never tell people these things that I know. I don't even have to come to the office, I can do this from home.

"Who the fuck do you think you are, you crazy little shit?" He touches a button on his desk. "Security?"

I am Harry's Smirking Revenge, I say.

The building is enchanted against Apparating and Disapparating. It'll take a minute for them to come up to the office. Fortunately, that's all I need.

I hold his wand up to my face, the wand that I swapped with a fake an hour ago in the cafeteria. If my boss tried to use his wand now, it would turn into a mouse. I hex myself in the face, and my front two teeth sprout outwards, suddenly nearly a foot long.

What are you doing? I say through my buck teeth.

Another hex, and my tongue is three feet long, green, and slapping around with a mind of it's own. It flings itself up and begins hitting me on the head. Ow, I yell. That really hurts. What the fuck are you doing?

I stagger back and fall onto an oaken table, knocking a crystal ball to the floor, shattering it to a million pieces. My boss' wand is tight in my hand. The owl has woken up, and is hooting uncomfortably.

What are you doing, I yell. Oh my God, please stop!

It's the Jelly-Legs Jinx next, and I reel backwards, arms flailing.

What are you doing? Oh please God, no!

I hit myself with a combination of my own creation, a mix of the Leg-Locker Curse and the Banishing Charm. As I fly back and up, into a massive glass-fronted cabinet, shattering the front and knocking over a hundred tiny vials, bottles, and potions, I find myself thinking of my first duel. With Voldemort.

I sag down against the cabinet for a moment, the monstrosity that is my tongue rolling around in the shards of glass, blood oozing from oversize taste buds. I hit myself again, with the pimple pox curse. Shattered glass tastes like cinnnamon, and I begin to crawl on my hands and knees towards my boss, who hasn't moved the whole time. Blood is pouring from my tongue, leaving a slick trail of saliva and blood along the floor. The enchantment on the trick wand has worn off, and behind my boss it turns back into a mouse and scuttles out the open window. The owl soars out after it, looking for a quick meal.

Crawling to the feet of my boss, I grab his hands and shove the wand into them,

smearing pus and blood and saliva all over his robes.

Look, I tell him, barely intelligible through the tongue and teeth. Give me the paychecks like I ask and you won't ever see me again. The tongue lashes around his legs, and he is looking down at me with a look of utter horror and amazement.

And then, at our most excellent moment together, security arrives. A harried-looking wizard with his wand out, backed by a pair of cave trolls brandishing clubs and looking for something to smash.

This is how Voldemort and I were able to have Wizard Club every night of the week.

THE BOOKSTORE HAD ALMOST CLOSED for the night, a small secondhand shop off Knockturn Alley. In the alley behind the alley behind the Alley, Voldemort shoves the shop clerk out into the back, the wand pressed into the base of the fat kid's skull, and tells him to get down on his knees. I smell urine, and not all of it is from the gutter.

"Give me your wallet", Voldemort tells the fat kid, who is probably as old as me, but sobbing like a firstyear. Fingers trembling, the fat kid pulls out a wallet and hands it back to Voldemort. Voldemort flips through it.

"Neville P. Longbottom. 414 Arbor Place, Apartment A. Small, cramped basement apartment, Neville?"

"How'd you know?" Neville is sobbing, and I think of Ron.

"Because they give shitty basement apartments letters instead of numbers. Neville, you are going to die."

Neville sobs again. "No..."

Voldemort flips through the wallet some more. "Is that your grandmother? Nana's going to have to call Dr. So-and-so to dig up your dental records, do you want to know why? Because nothing's going to be left of your face. Have you ever seen what the _Concussitus _Curse does to a human skull, Neville? It's not pretty."

Neville keeps sobbing, and Voldemort keeps flipping.

"A Hogwarts Student ID! What did you study, Neville?"

"S-s-stuff..." Neville stammers. I think I can smell shit.

"'Stuff'?" Voldemort says. "Were the midterms hard?" Neville sobs, and Voldemort pushes the wand tip against the back of his skull, digging it in under a mop of sweaty brown hair. "I asked you what you studied, Neville!"

"H-herbology, mostly"

"Why?"

"I-I don't know"

"What did you want to BE, Neville P. Longbottom?" Voldemort demands. Neville whimpers.

"The QUESTION, NEVILLE, is what did you want to be?"

"Herbologist! Herbologist!"

"Magical plants!"

"Yeah, magical plants and s-s-s..."

"Stuff, yeah, I got that. That means you have to get more schooling."

Neville shakes his head. Fat tears drip down onto the cold cobblestones. "Too much school..." he whimpers.

"Would you rather be dead? Here? On your knees? In back of a bookstore?"

Neville wailed. "Nooo!"

A pause. A heartbeat. Voldemort lowers the wand.

"I'm keeping your ID, Neville. I'm going to check on you. I know where you live. If you aren't back in school and on your way to becoming an Herbologist in six weeks, you will be dead. Now run on home."

Neville rises, and Voldemort tosses the wallet at him. It falls to the street, and Neville picks it up, sobbing, and turns and runs with the clumsy gracelessness.

What the fuck was that, I ask.

"Imagine how he feels", Voldemort says.

Come on, this isn't funny, I say. What was the point of that?

"Tommorrow will be the best day of Neville P. Longbottom's life," Voldemort says, with a calm, zenlike expression on his face. "His breakfast will taste better than any meal you or I will ever taste."

Voldemort tosses the wand at me, and as it does so it shakes in just the right way, and it turns into a large rubber chicken that falls limp with a splat on the ground. Stamped on it's back is "Weasley's Wizard Wheezes".

Voldemort turned and began leaving the alley in the opposite direction from where Neville went. He had a plan. And it started to make sense in a Voldemort sort of way. No fear. No distractions. And the ability to let that which does not matter truly slide.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

One morning I chase Ginny off to the sound of hammering and sawing. I go down into the basement, and see triple-decker bunk beds making a labyrinth, filling every spare square inch of space and then some. Military-surplus mattress, blanket, pillows. The doorbell rings and Voldemort passes me on the way to the stairs up. What is this, I ask him.

"What do you think" Voldemort asks.

Bunk beds. What do we need bunk beds for?

The front door opens, and standing on the front steps is a someone from Wizard Club, dressed in all-black robes, a cauldron stuffed with a bundle sitting on the porch in front of him.Voldemort looks at him for a half-second.

"Too young. Sorry", then turns and goes back in the house, shutting the door.

"If the applicant is too young, tell him he's too young. Old, too old. Fat, too fat."

Applicant?

"If the applicant can wait for three days without food, shelter, or encouragement, then he may enter and begin his training."

Training for what?

We tell him there's been a mistake, he should probably go home. We tell him he's trespassing and threaten to Transfigure him into a toad. Good Auror, Bad Auror. After three days the wizard is still standing there, and Big Ron is standing next to him, staring off into the distance with the same look of grim determination. Voldemort looks at the first wizard.

"You have two black robes? Two pair black pants? One pair black boots? Two pair black socks? One regulation black cauldron? Three hundred galleons personal burial money?"

Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir.

The wizard picks up his cauldron and goes in. Ron is still standing there. Voldemort looks at him, laughs. "You're too old, fat man. And your tits are too big. Get the fuck off my porch." Voldemort turns and comes back in the house, and Ron looks after him like a kicked puppy, and I can see the tears beginning to well up in his eyes. He picks up his cauldron and turns to leave, and on an impulse I dash after him. Ron, Ron, hold on.

Inside, Voldemort has shaved the head of the wizard, standing his black robes in front of a cracked mirror. Voldemort gives a sharp slap the back of his head. "Like an elf, ready to try the latest experimental potion. A house elf, ready to sacrifice for the greater good."

From one to two to many, Grimmauld Place was soon swarming with house elves. Raking, sweeping, scrubbing, cleaning, stirring, cooking, mixing, molding, brewing.

Why was Lord Voldemort building himself an army? To what purpose? For what greater good? In Voldemort we trusted.

One night I come home and Voldemort high-fives me.

What's all this for? I ask.

"We're celebrating", Voldemort says. Celebrating what?

"Check it out," he motions to the sitting room.

I come into the sitting room of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place one night to see a dozen house elves in their black robes, spattered in green paint and holding bottles of butterbeer. They're hunched around the radio, listening anxiously. The door to the closet, used as a darkroom, is sealed shut, and I can hear noises behind it.

One of the house elves is fiddling with the dial, and finally settles in on the voice of a reporter, live outside the Hogwarts Divination Tower.

"Headmaster Dumbledore has just arrived, Headmaster could you please tell us what you think has happened here?"

Dumbledore sounds frazzled, which is quite something for a wizard of his power and prestige. "We believe this is related to recent acts of wizard Muggle-baiting around the city, somehow related to underground duelling clubs. We are coordinating a rigorous investigation."

The door to the darkroom bursts open, and two house elves emerge, triumphantly holding a massive poster-sized photograph between them. Everyone leaps up to look, and there in smoking glory is the Divination Tower of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Smoke billows from two of the towers, forming the flaming eyes of a massive smiley face, capped with a professor's mortarboard, waving a wand. The moving photograph shows the effect of the magical paint, and the smiley face is grinning, waving it's wand, and winking at the photographer. The house elves erupt in cheering and laughter.

What the fuck is this? What the fuck did you guys do?

They all calm down, subdued. Ron says quietly, "The first rule of Dumbledore's Army is you do not ask questions, sir."

Dumbledore's Army? Why did you name yourself after the Headmaster of Hogwarts?

"The first rule of Dumbledore's Army is you do not ask questions, sir."

I turn and look at Voldemort, lounging in the kitchen. He doesn't look back at me.

THE BANQUET HALL DOESN'T NEED waiters, but it has them anyway, to give the impression of luxury and opulence. The real house elves, the ones scurrying around in the kitchens directly underneath the tables, remain unseen as they prepare the food and give it to us to take up to the diners above. When the magic of teleporting food is commonplace, the frivolity of hand-delivered food is a novelty.

Someone or other is being awarded the Order of Merlin, First Class, for who knows what. Dumbledore excuses himself to take a leak halfway through the fourth speech, and I nod at Ron who nods at the others, and we all quietly leave the banquet hall, depositing trays of lobster and fish in bins just inside the kitchen.

Ski masks over the head proide a simple and elegant disguise as we follow Dumbledore to the bathroom. He opens the door and is ambushed by Voldemort, who Stuns him, headbutts him, and drags him on his back down to the last stall on the left, as the rest of us swarm in after him, wands out and at the ready. Dumbledore is disarmed, then hit with another stunner, then a silencer, and then duct tape is placed over his mouth, sticking to the white hairs of his beard and moustache as we all crowd around him, staring down.

The other house elves pull his robes apart, down to his underwear, and snap a rubber band tight around his testicles. Dumbledore's normally calm and placid blue eyes are wide-open with fear and shock.

Voldemort leans down over him, filling his field of vision. He isn't wearing a ski mask.

"Hi. You're going to call off your 'rigorous investigation'. You're going to publicly state that there is no underground group. Or: These guys here are going to take your balls."

They smile and wave. One of them holds his wand up and mutters "_Castriato_". A bluish-white blade sprouts from the tip, a spell imported and adapted from the ones that Arabian Shieks used to make harem guards. Dumbledore's eyes grow wide with fear, and he shakes his head.

"We'll send one to the Daily Prophet, and one to the Quibbler, press-release style. Look. The people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we handle your owls, we drive your Knight Busses. We guard you while you sleep. Do not FUCK with us."

The house elf with the bluish-white wand snaps it down and around, and Dumbledore is screaming so loud it's almost audible through the duct tape and the silencer. The rubber band flips up and over, landing on the mountain of scraggly hair that is his beard. The house elf laughs.

"Fooled ya."

Leaving the banquet hall through a side exit, we all split up, going in different directions. Voldemort grins at a blond, snotty-looking house elf with pale skin and a widow's peak, slapping him on the back like they were buddies from Hogwarts. He ignores me as he and Blondie go in one direction, myself and Ron in another.

I am Harry's Inflamed Sense of Rejection.

Later, at Wizard Club, I fight Blondie. The blood roars, a dull echo in my ear. I unleash a dozen spells, one right after the other, with a fury I haven't felt in all my time in Wizard Club. Blondie reels back, the curses and jinxes interacting with each other in very unpleasant ways. He tries to raise his wand, but I cast _expelliarmus _and his wand flies into the crowd.

_Expelliarmus_ isn't one of the Unforgiveables, but it's use is still forbidden in Wizard Club. The crowd goes silent as I continue my assault, hex after jinx after curse blasting Blondie full in the face. Slugs, blood, pus, sweat, spatter across the floor and the crowd as they silently close in on us. I come to my senses crouched over the gibbering, slobbering mess that was a wizard, wand clutched in my hand like a dagger.

Voldemort comes up behind me.

"Where'd you go Psycho Boy?"

I wanted to destroy something beautiful. I wanted to breathe smoke.

On the ground, the thing that was a wizard makes a gibbering sound, and tries to roll over.

"Get him to St. Mungo's," Voldemort says, and takes me by the arm. "We're going for a ride."

Above, out in the street, a car floats down from the skies and settles onto the ground in front of us. An older man with a thinning head of red hair slides out from behind the steering wheel. "From the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Department, Lord Voldemort. Use at your leisure."

Voldemort and I get in the front seat, two house elves slide into the back, and we are off through the air in a flying blue Ford Anglia above the streets of London, rain spattering on the windshield, the rainwater making fluid patterns of light on Voldemort's face and hands as he grips the steering wheel.

Voldemort kills the silence. "Something on your mind, dear?"

Why didn't you tell me about Dumbledore's Army? I ask.

"The first rule of Dumbledore's Army is that you do not ask questions", the two house elves in back recite.

"What are you talking about?" Voldemort asks me.

Why didn't you include me in the beginning?

"Wizard Club was the beginning, now it's out of the basements and it's Dumbledore's Army."

You and I started Wizard Club together, do you remember that? It's as much mine as it is yours, you know.

"Is this about you and me?"

I am Harry's Irritated Bile Ducts. Yeah, I thought we were doing this together.

"You're missing the point", Voldemort says as he turns the steering wheel and the flying Ford Anglia drops and swoops towards the ground, flying over city streets. Outside I can hear honks, yells, imagine the surprise of Muggles as they see a two-ton hunk of steel and metal flying through the air above them. "We are not special"

Fuck that. You should've told me.

Voldemort has driven down into the canyons of the London streets, swerving and diving and ducking and bobbing like a Seeker trying to avoid a bludger. He's not paying attention to where he's going, and a Knight Bus no not a Knight Bus a normal red Muggle double-decker bus blasts it's horn and swerves to one side as we nearly take the top deck off, Muggles screaming and shouting. I yell, and Voldemort jerks the steering wheel to one side, almost as an afterthought, and for another moment we're safe.

Goddamnit, Voldemort. God damn it. God damn it.

"What do you want?" Voldemort asks. "Should I send you an owl? Send you a carbon-layer parchment form in triplicate?"

I want to know--

"YOU decide YOUR level of involvement!" he yells.

I will, but first I want to know--

The house elves in the back seat interrupt me. "The First Rule of Dumbledore's Army is--"

Shut UP, I interrupt them right back. I want to know what you're thinking.

"Fuck what you know," Voldemort says. "You need to forget about what you know, that's your problem. Forget about what you THINK you know. About life, about friendship, and especially about you and me."

What is that supposed to mean?

The Ford Anglia stops flying and is now skimming a few inches above the pavement so it may as well be driving down the highway, going the wrong way at eighty miles an hour in pitch black driving rain. Voldemort turns to the two house elves sitting in the back seat and asks them, what would you wish you'd have done before you died?

Paint a self-portrait, says one. Invent a new spell, says the other, and Voldemort looks at me and says what about you? I tell him I don't know, turn the wheel, there are headlights coming at us and Muggles thinking this is just a drunk driver, not a flying Ford Anglia with four wizards, no, two wizards and two house elves in it and honking to try and get us out of the wrong side of the road.

You have to know the answer to this question, Voldemort persists. If you died right now, how would you feel about life? I don't know, I tell him, I wouldn't feel anything good because I'd be dead, is that what you want to hear me say? But it's not good enough, I try to turn the wheel and Voldemort grips with both hands, tighter on the wheel and I wrench it to the side just in time to avoid a massive lorry drive by, splashing the Ford Anglia with rainwater and bellowing rage with an airhorn.

Goddamnit. Goddamnit. Fuck you. Fuck Wizard Club. Fuck Ginny. I'm sick of all your shit.

And Voldemort lets go of the steering wheel and we drift back into the oncoming lane.

Quit screwing around, I tell him. Take the wheel. He tells me I'm pathetic, I ask him what he's talking about. "Why do you think I blew up your closet?" he asks.

What?

"Hitting bottom is not a weekend-retreat. It's not a goddamned Hogsmeade visit. Stop trying to control everything and just _let go!_"

And I do.

All right.

Fine.

Fine.

The hovering flying Ford Anglia barrels on through the night until a stalled car on the side of the road comes out of nowhere, red lights blinking a warning too little too late. I keep my hands off the wheel and then we're plowing through the car, the undercarriage of the Anglia shearing off the top of the stalled car, followed by total thaumaturgical failure. All the enchantments break in a sizzling crackle of purple and green lightning and then the passenger compartment is flying through the air, turning barrelling, whirling, spinning.

The passenger compartment flies up end over end, then spins and does a full gainer with a twist into a ditch landing on the roof with a sickening crunch then rolls twice before stopping. Everything is suddenly silent again, the house elves in the back are twisted piles, except for Voldemort who is laughing and laughing and pulling me out the smashed side door of the Anglia into the rain.

"God-damn! Hahaha! We just had a near-life experience!"

The rainwater falls down on us, mixing with my tears and my spit and my sweat and my blood. I hear Voldemort laughing as everything goes black.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Voldemort talks to me while I'm in my coma, lying on a dirty mattress under soiled sheets in a bedroom on the third floor of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place.

"In the world I see... You're playing Quidditch in the damp canyon forests around Big Ben. You will have a staff of permanently Imperiused Muggles waiting on you hand and foot for the rest of your life. You will cast your magic in the open, without fear or secrecy. You will live in a world of wizards, by wizards, for wizards, a powerful and mighty empire that will stand for all time."

I slept. I don't know how long I slept. But when I woke up, Voldemort was gone.

Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place had become a living thing, wet inside from so many people sweating and breathing. So many wizards moving, the house itself moved. Castle Voldemort. I had to hug the walls, trapped inside this clockwork of house elves. Cooking and working and sleeping in teams with a coordination and efficiency that would have shamed real house elves.

I go into the kitchen and one wall is a mass of newspaper clippings. Walls are lined with manila files, racks of scrolls, acres of parchment spread out on tables. Labels of "Mischief", "Disinformation", "Muggle Baiting" catch my eyes. Other folders have other names. "Hogwarts School". "Diagon Alley". "Ministry of Magic". I move to look at one of them, and a pale skinny hand moves to block mine. It's Blondie, his face still wrapped in bandages and smelling of salve and ointment, the yellow-white widow's peak still visible above the wrappings.

"It's under control, sir."

Where's Voldemort?

"Sir, the first rule of Dumbledore's Army--"

Right, right. And as he moves his hand away, I look down and see a scar, a crude sketch of a flaming skull with a serpent coming out of the mouth, on the inside of his forearm.

I'm all alone, surrounded by house elves. My uncle dumped me. Voldemort dumped me. What comes next in Dumbledore's Army, only Voldemort knows. The second rule is you do not ask questions. I am Harry's Broken Heart, trying to kill itself with a gallon jug of cheap vodka that night out in the garden when Ginny comes up, looking around at all the house elves cooking, cleaning, washing, raking.

"Who are these people?"

I shrug. Grimmauld Place Soap Company.

"Can I come in?" she asks. He's not here, I tell her. Voldemort's gone, I say. Voldemort's went away. Voldemort's gone. She stares at me for a long moment, misery on her face, then turns and walks away. I toss a cigarette into the grass, take a pull on my jug of vodka, and head back towards the house.

When I get inside, there is a commotion. Tables being cleared off, house elves scrambling and ducking and moving. "We got wounded coming through," someone yells. "Clear some fucking room!"

What's going on. What happened?

"We were in the Department of Mysteries, going to do two things at once. Destroy the Ministry's supply of Time-turners, and disrupt the Muggle sewer system."

I saw the scene in my mind's eye as he talked. House elves readying spells to shatter all the hourglasses in the tight room, a dozen more house elves standing ready with those ridiculous vacuum cleaners that Muggles use, to suck up the time-turner dust and dump it in the Muggle's water treatment plant. Everything went according to plan, until.

"Someone must have called the Aurors... The Order of the Phoenix showed up, and they started blasting". Appearing so fast it was almost as if they had Apparated in, wands out. A running battle, spells and hexes flying fast and furious as the group tried to get out of the Ministry, outside the wards so they could Apparate home. Out of the Department of Mysteries, through the elevator shaft, into the fountained lobby, a desperate dash for the the fireplaces to get out of there, to go anywhere else.

"And then," the house elf's voice was tight with fury. "_Dumbledore_ showed up." A powerful, towering figure, the most powerful wizard possibly of all time emerging in the Ministry Lobby. He hadn't taken Voldemort's threat seriously, and approved the use of Unforgiveables by Aurors. "And he... He got Hermione."

I yanked back the cover and looked at the body on the table. Bushy brown hair, slightly overlarge teeth, eyes staring vacantly into space. Big Ron, the old cheesebread, stumbled in, bleeding pus from a dozen boils on his face, neck, arms. "Dumbledore killed Hermione", he said dully.

"Those motherfuckers!" Big Ron sobbed.

"We gotta bury her. Get rid of the evidence," one of the house elves said. Blondie took up the call. "Bury her in the garden."

What?

"Take her to the garden and bury her. Come on people, move!" Blondie said.

They swarmed around her body like ghouls, and I dove in, pushing them away, shoving them back.

What are you talking about, I yelled. This is not a fucking piece of evidence! This is a person! She's a friend of mine and you're not going to bury her in the fucking garden!

Blondie remained firm."She was killed serving Dumbledore's Army, sir."

This is _Hermionie_, I said.

"But sir, in Dumbledore's Army, we have no names."

No, listen to me, I said. This is woman and she has name, and it's Hermione Granger, all right?

"Hermione Granger," muttered one of the house elves.

She's dead now, because of us, all right? Do you understand that?

"I understand." The house elf looked up. "In death, a member of Dumbledore's Army has a name. Her name is Hermione Granger."

Ron looked down at the silent figure. "Her name is Hermione Granger."

They all began chanting now, her name is Hermione Granger, her name is Hermione Granger. Shut up, shut up, I said. Shut up shut up shut up. But they don't listen, and I turn and run up the stairs to Voldemort's room, finding all the old stubs from the Knight Bus tickets. I could hear them chanting in the kitchen below, and I continued to hear them long after I had left their voices behind.

Her name is Hermione Granger.

Her name is Hermione Granger.

Her name is Hermione Granger.

I went to all the cities on Voldemort's uesd ticket stubs, tavern-hopping. I didn't know how or why but I could look at fifty different bars and I just knew. I'm looking for Lord Voldemort, I would tell them. It's _very_ important to talk to him.

"I wish I could help you. Sir." they would tell me. And then wink. Every city I went to, as soon as I set foot off the plane, I knew a wizard club was close. Voldemort had been busy. Setting up franchises, not just in England, but all over Europe. France. Spain. Denmark. Germany. Italy. Turkey. Greece. Am I asleep? Had I slept? Is Voldemort my bad dream, or am I Voldemort's?

Sometimes I could get stories out of people. What kind of stories? "No one knows what he looks like", says one person. "He has Permanent Polymorph done every three years," says another. They would ask me if it was true. If Lord Voldemort was building an army.

Going from Knight Bus to Knight Bus, sitting in oversize divans and recliners that side around like pinballs in a Muggle amusement park, time lost all meaning, I fell into a perpetual state of deja-vu. Everywhere I went, I felt I had already been there. It was like following an invisible man. The smell of dry blood. Dirty bare foot-prints circling each other. That aroma of old spell discharge like ozone and freon. The feel of the pentgram on a floor still warm from the duel the night before. I was always one step behind Voldemort. And in the backrooms of supermarkets, the kitchens of restaurants, they chant.

Her name is Hermione Granger.

Her name is Hermione Granger.

Her name is Hermione Granger.

"Welcome back, sir. How are you?"

I'm in a bar, somewhere, somewhen. The bartender is looking at me, wearing a gigantic plastic cone around his head, the kind they use to keep dogs from licking stitches. His nametag reads "Mssr. Moony" in fancy cursive lettering.

Do you know me?

"Is this a test, sir?"

No, this is not a test.

"You were in here last Thursday," he says.

Thursday?

"You were standing exactly where you are now, asking how good our security is. It's tight as a drum, sir."

Who do you think I am?

"Are you sure this isn't a test?"

No, this is not a test.

"You're Lord Voldemort. You're the one who gave me this."

And he raises his arm up, and on his forearm is the skull-and-serpent mark, drawn on with ink and engraved by newt's blood.

Please return your seats to their full upright and locked position.

In the hotel, I'm on my hands and knees in front of the small personal fireplace for head-to-head Floo connection installed in my hotel room. I toss a pinch of powder in, shout her address, and soon Ginny is staring back at me.

"What?" she asks.

Ginny, it's me. Have ever done it?

"Done what?" she asks.

Have we ever had sex?

"What kind of a stupid question is that?"

Is it stupid because the answer is yes, or because the answer is no?

"Is this a trick?"

No, Ginny, I just need to know--

"--You mean, you want to know if we were just having sex or making love?"

We did make love.

"Is that what you're calling it?"

Just answer the question, Ginny, please. Did we do it or not?

That sets her off. "You fuck me, then snub me. You love me, you hate me. You show me your sensitive side, then you turn into a total asshole. Is that a pretty accurate description of our relationship, Voldemort?"

We have just lost thaumaturgical integrity.

What did you just say? I ask.

"What is wrong with you?"

What did you just call me? Say my name!

"Voldemort! Voldemort, you fucking freak!" she shrieks. "Though I'll be damned if I'll call you 'Lord', no idea where you came up with that. What's going on? I'm coming over." She knows not to use the Floo network to get to Grimmauld Place, so closes the connection as I yell, no wait, I'm not there. I stand up, move away from the fireplace, and Voldemort is suddenly behind me, looking very angry.

"You broke your promise," he says.

Jesus, Voldemort.

"You fucking talked to her about me!"

What the fuck is going on here?

"I asked you for one simple thing..." Voldemort isn't listening to me.

Why do people think that I'm you? Voldemort rolls his eyes at me. "Sit", he says.

I sit on the thin mattress, and Voldemort leans back against the far wall. Now, answer me, I tell him. Why do people think I'm you?

"I think you know," he says.

No, I don't.

"Yes, you do. Why would anyone possibly confuse you with me?"

I... I don't know. And then there's a sudden flash of memory. I feel something in my mind breaking, and something else fixing at the same time. I see Dumbledore opening the door to the bathroom, only Voldemort isn't standing there... It's me. Voldemort smiles.

"You got it."

My head spins as everything falls apart and comes together, one set of memories being destroyed as another slowly takes it's place. Me over Dumbledore, telling him to not fuck with us. Pouring skrewts' blood over a drawing on my forearm. Voldemort isn't in these memories. Because...

We're the same person.

I don't understand.

"You were looking for a way to change your life," Voldemort says. "You could not do this on your own. All the ways you wished you could be, that's me. I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck, I'm smart, capable, and most importantly, I'm free in all the ways that you are not."

No...

I see myself standing in front of Grimmauld Place, yelling at Ginny. Voldemort's not here. Voldemort's gone.

This is impossible. This is crazy.

"People do it every day. They talk to themselves. They see themselves as they like to be. They don't have the courage you have, to just run with it." I see myself standing in an alley, hexing myself with my own wand. "Naturally, you're still wrestling with it. Sometimes you're still you." I see myself sitting in a tavern over a pitcher of butterbeer, talking to nobody. "Other times you imagine yourself watching me." I see myself standing in the center of the crowd of Wizard Club, reading off the rules. If this is your first night at wizard club, you have to duel. "Little by litle, you're just letting yourself become... Lord Voldemort!"

But you have a house.

"Rented in your name."

You have jobs, you have a whole life...

"You have night jobs, because you can't sleep. Or stay up and make soap."

Ginny... You're fucking Ginny, Voldemort.

"Actually, you're fucking Ginny, but it's all the same to her." I see myself and Ginny, tangled up in sheets, pounding and thumping and moaning and groaning.

Oh.

My.

God.

"Now you see our dilemma", Voldemort says. "She knows too much. We have to talk about how this might compromise our goals."

What are you saying? This is... This is bullshit, I'm not listening to this. You are insane.

"No, you are insane, and we definitely do not have time for this crap!" I try to stand, and I visualize more than I see two points of white light shooting out of Voldemort's wand to my face. It's called a changeover. Life keeps on, and none of the Muggles have any idea.

WHEN I WOKE UP, HOURS LATER, I had to sign out at the front desk for three dozen owls I don't remember sending. Owls I sent while I was asleep, and Voldemort was awake. Had I been going to bed earlier every night? Have I been sleeping later? Have I been Voldemort longer and longer?

Grimmauld Place was empty when I returned, a hollow shell of what was a living building. Dozens of empty cauldrons, potions, beakers, phials, everything you would need to start up your own potion brewing factory. All the house elves are gone. I don't know where they've gone. And I know that I don't know where they've gone. Deja vu all over again.

"With enough soap," Voldemort says, "You could blow up the whole world."

I think of the files and maps that still hang in the sitting room above. Oh, my God. I grab a file, the Floo powder, and shout the street address into the fireplace, sticking my head into the hearth. The other side is a large building of some kind. I can see a dozen other fireplaces in a massive lobby, a fountain with a statue of a wizard and an elf and a centaur standing in the middle. Hello, I shout. Is anybody there?

A wizard wanders into view, peering down at me. "Ministry's closed for the night, sir. You'll have to come back in the morning."

I need to talk to your supervisor, right away. The wizard laughs. "I'm it," he says.

Okay, listen to me. I think something really horrible is about to happen in your building, you've got to...

The wizard winks at me. "It's under control, sir."

Excuse me?

"Don't worry about us, sir. We're solid."

I yank my head out of the fireplace, coughing up soot and smoke, and look at the dozens of files in scrolls on the wall. I grab them all, and run.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

It's not every day you get to turn yourself in to the Aurors for doing the sorts of thing that it turns out I had been doing. They had been a little unsure of how to proceed at first, so they put me in an interrogation room with Inspector Moody and three other Aurors, and I told them everything I knew. As much as I knew.

Chapters are sprouting in at least five or six other major cities already. This is tightly-regimented organization, with many cells capable of operating completely independent central leadership. Look, go to that house, ok? Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place. That's our headquarters. In the back, buried in the garden, you'll find the body of Hermione Granger. In the basement, you gonna find some cauldons used very recently to make large quantities of demon powder. I believe the plan is to blow up these important wizard buildings across England and Europe.

"Why these buildings? Why the wizard world?" Moody asked me, when I was done.

"Cause enough of a ruckus, the Memory Charmers can't hide it form the Muggles. It'll force the Wizard and Muggle worlds into a confrontation, and the Wizards will have to seize control or be destroyed. It has to be done now, while magic can still beat Muggle technology."

Moody grunted and picked up some files. "Keep him talking. I need to send an owl." He left the room, the door clicked shut, and the three Aurors turned and smiled at me.

The tall black Auror was beaming. "I really admire what you're doing."

"What?"

"You're a brave man to order this," he continued. The three pulled out their wands. The female Auror with short spiky purple hair spoke next.

"You said if anyone ever interferes with Dumbledore's Army, _even you_"... There was a snap-hiss as the third one's wand erupted with a blade of blue-white energy.

"We gotta get his balls," said the third, a square-jawed wizard with thick straw-colored hair.

"It's useless to fight," said the black one.

"It's a really powerful gesture, Lord Voldemort. It'll set quite an example," said the woman. I stood up and backed away from them, towards the door. "You're making a big mistake," I said. I am Harry's cold sweat.

"You said you'd say that."

"I'm not Lord Voldemort!"

"You told us you'd say that, too," said the purple-haired girl.

"Okay. I'm Lord Voldemort. Listen to me. I'm giving you a direct order. We are aborting this mission right now."

"You said you would definitely say that", said the black one. All three lunge at me and grab me. The woman tears the bottom of my robe off, the other two holding me down. "Are you out of your fucking minds? You're Aurors!" I screamed. There was a knock at the door, and we all froze.

"Is somebody timing this?" said the square-jawed one one. Then, to me, "Keep your mouth shut. Shit!"

The woman went over to the door. It cracked open, and I could hear Moody talking on the other side. "Some of this info checks out. Let's go over to that house on Grimmauld Place."

The woman nodded, then closed the door. Too late, I yell "Hey, wait!", but he doesn't hear. His magic eye must not be as magic as I thought. I struggle against the Aurors, flailing my arms and legs desperately. "Sir, we have to do this," one of them says. "You're going to fuck up the time", says another. And then there's a distraction when they're looking for a rubber band, and somehow I grab a wand out of the square jawed one's hands and have it pointing at all of them, I'm off the table and backing against the wall brandishing it at them.

"Stay away from me! Drop your wands! Fucking drop it!" They comply, and lower themselves to the ground when I order them. My robes are still wide-open, I'm shaking from the adrenaline, and holding an unfamiliar wand on three fully-trained Aurors. I back away, towards the door.

"The first who comes out of this fucking door gets... Gets a hex salad, you understand!" I yell. Then I open the door, and slip out into the hall, down the elevator shaft, into the lobby where I leap over the turnstiles, over the marble and tile floor, and dive into a fireplace just as another wizard exits, blowing past him, getting out of the Auror's Station, going somewhere, anywhere, anywhere other than here. I don't remember where I emerged to or from, just that I kept going from fireplace to fireplace, to try and lose any pursuit, running and yelling and ducking and dodging.

And then I found myself standing on the street in Hogsmeade in the middle of the night, staring up at the castle of Hogwarts on the hill far off in the distance. One of the files was still in my hand, for the castle. Without hesitating, I turned and ran up the road to Hogwarts. I ran until my muscles burned and my veins pumped acid. Then I ran some more.

The gates were locked and warded, and Voldemort appeared, standing on the other side, taunting me.

"What the fuck are you doing? Running around with your robe wide open? Man, you look like a crazy person!"

"No, I'm on to you," I say. "I know what's going on here."

Voldemort laughs, and I grab a rock and throw it at him laughing behind the gate. The rock crashes and clatters, without making so much as a dent. I grab the wand I took from the Auror, and in a blind leap of faith point it at the locked gates and yell "_Alomohora!_" Responding to the wand, the gates swing open, and I pound up the gravel path to the castle.

Deep in the dungeons, in the open spaces that are used for storage or flood control or whatever, are dozens of barrels sitting around the foundation columns. Demon powder.

Voldemort is sitting on top of one of them as I approach, eating an apple. "Now what are you doing?"

"I'm stopping this," I say, looking at all the barrels.

"Why? Greatest thing you've ever done, man."

"No, I can't let this happen."

"You know, there are ten other bombs in ten other buildings," he smirks.

"Goddamnit. Since when is Dumbledore's Army about murder?"

"The buildings are empty. Security and maintenance are all our people, and Hogwarts is out for the summer. We're not killing anyone, man, we're going to make them kings!"

"Hermione is dead! They used the killing curse on her!"

"If you wanna make an omelet..." Voldemort shrugs.

"No, I'm not listening to you, you're not even there."

I pry open the lid of the barrel with a dozen wires sprouting out of it and look inside. The inside hums quietly with a thick multicolored web of spell energy, all contingency chain-reaction spells set to detonate all the barrels from this primer barrel, and prevent people from doing exactly what I'm trying to do now. Defusing the entire setup is as simple as dispelling the correct enchantment in the chain.

"Wouldn't do that," Voldemort says. "Unless you know which spell is what."

An hourglass sits horizontal, rubies sliding from one side to the other. There isn't much time left.

"If you know, then I know." I slowly lower the wand into the barrel, and suddenly Voldemort is peering over the edge with me, his face directly in mine.

"Or: Maybe I knew you'd know, so I spent the whole day thinking about the wrong spells."

I stare at the network of quietly humming energy, following paths. Red to blue to green to yellow to purple back to green... I place the wand near the green spell, pulsing quietly.

"You think?" Voldemort asks. I tighten my grip.

"Oh heavens, no, not the green one. Dispel anyone but the green one."

_Deletrius_!

The entire spiderweb fizzles into nothing. The hourglass stops moving.

"I asked you not to do that!" Voldemort lunges at me, knocking me on my ass. I stand up and wave the wand at him, a concussive spell. It goes high, and impacts into the stone column.

"Whoa! Whoa!" Voldemort yells, spreading his arms wide. "Okay! You are now firing a wand at your imaginary friend, near FOUR HUNDRED GALLONS of DEMON POWDER!!"

Voldemort advances towards me, and I fire again, out of reflex. He screams in exasperation, punches me in the face, and grabs the wand out of my hand. The last thing I see is the cold stone floor rushing up to my face as I fall unconscious.

"THREE MINUTES. THIS IS it. The beginning. Ground zero."

I think this is about where we came in.

"Would you like to say a few words to mark the occasion?" Voldemort asks me, removing the wand from my mouth.

I still can't think of anything.

"Ah. Flashback humor." He twirls the wand around in his hand, moving towards the window. "It's getting exciting now... Two and a half. Think of everything we've accomplished, man." Below, the Durmstrang ship is sitting in the lake, the Beauxbatons carriage on the lawn outside the Great Hall, quietly brought here by the house elves, now empty.

A Knight Bus slams into existence outside the gates, and a dozen house elves emerge. Carrying Ginny between them, they tromp up towards the castle. I can hear her screaming, all the way up here.

Why is she here?

"Tying up loose ends."

I look over the edge, at the destruction running rampant in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Since I disarmed one set of bombs here, Voldemort did the next best thing and called as many house elves as he could to the castle, to destroy everything else by hand. Every other bomb is going to go off, so the wizard-Muggle war is still only two minutes away.

I know this because Voldemort knows this.

I'm begging you, don't do this.

Voldemort sneers. "I'm not doing this. We are doing this. This is what we want."

No, I don't want this.

"Right, except 'you' is meaningless now. We have to forget about you."

Jesus, you're a voice in my head.

"You're a voice in mine!"

You're a fucking hallucination, why can't I get rid of you?

"You need me," he says.

No, I don't. I really don't anymore...

"Hey, you created me!" he says. "I didn't create some loser alter-ego to make myself feel better. Take some responsibility."

I do. I am responsible, for all of it and I accept that. So please, I'm begging you, call it off.

"Have I ever let us down?" he demands. "How far have you come because of me? I will bring us through this. As always, I will carry you kicking and screaming and in the end, you'll thank me."

I'm grateful to you, for everything you've done for me. But this is too much. I don't want this.

"What do you want? Wanna go back to the shit job, fucking closet home? Fuck you! I won't do it."

This can't be happening.

"It's already done, so shut up. Sixty seconds, can you see all right?"

I look down from him, staring at my hands. I can figure this out. I can figure this out. This is not for real. The wand is not even in your hand. The wand's in my hand. The wand is in my hand.

And the wand is in my hand.

"Hey, good for you. It doesn't change a thing." Voldemort is unimpressed.

I look up and stare at him for a long moment, then raise the wand and put it against my temple.

"Why do you want to put a wand to your head?" Voldemort asks.

Not my head, Voldemort. Our head.

"Interesting," Voldemort says as he moves away from the ramparts towards me. "What are you going to do with this, Quidditch-boy? Hey, it's you and me." He holds out a hand. "Friends?"

Voldemort, I want you to really listen to me.

"Okay".

My eyes are open.

I move the wand up, place the tip against my skull, and scream out a spell. Pain explodes in my forehead, unbearable pain unlike any I've ever felt before, wracking my entire body. The world goes green and smells of ozone and I collapse in a heap on the floor. Blood streams from a hole in my forehead.

Though the blood is in my eyes and blinding me, I can see Voldemort standing before me, a distant look in his eyes as they take on a green tinge. He coughs a puff of emerald smoke.

"What's that smell?" he says faintly, and collapses in a heap.

The trapdoor to the top of the tower slams open, and I hear movement.

"Where is everybody?" a house elf says.

"I dunno," says another. "What's going on?"

Then one of them sees me. "Lord Voldemort!" They drop their butterbeers and rush over to me. "Sir, are you alright?" one of them asks.

I wipe the blood from my face and cough. Oh, yeah, I'm okay.

"You look terrible. What happened?"

Oh, nothing. It's no problem.

"No, no, sir, he's not kidding, you look really awful. You need medical assistance."

Look, I'm fine. Everything's fine.

More screaming, and Ginny is atop the tower with the rest of us, kicking and screaming. Let her go, I tell them, and she shoves them away as they set her on her feet.

"By Merlin's Beard! You!"

Hi, Ginny, I say lamely. I turn to the house elves. Leave her with me, get your stuff, I'll meet you downstairs.

"Are you sure, sir?"

Yes, I'm sure.

Ginny stalks furiously through the house elves as they head back towards the trap door. "You fucker!" she screams. "What kind of sick fucking game are you playing now, you-- Oh my God! Your face!" Her anger evaporates as she sees the wound on my forehead, the blood streaming down my face.

Yeah, I know.

"What happened?" she pulls a handkerchief out of her purse and begins dabbing at it.

Don't ask.

"Is that..." she begins to say. Over by the trapdoor, a house elf has picked up the wand from the ground and mutters "**_Priori incantato_**" over it. A small puff of green smoke appears, and we all hear the quiet wail of agony.

"_Avada Kedavra_?" she says in disbelief, dabbing my forehead. "But... There's only this wound... Shaped like a lightning bolt."

The house elves descend into the tower.

"I can't believe he's still standing," one says.

"One tough motherfucker," says another.

Ginny is digging in her purse for some salve. "Who did this?"

I did, actually. I look at the last house elf, about to head down the trapdoor. "Find some gauze."

Ginny stares. "You _Avada Kedavra'_d yourself?"

Yeah, but it's okay. Ginny, look at me. I look into those big pretty green eyes, in the pale face with the red hair. I'm really okay. Everything's going to be fine.

There is a roar, and other towers in what will soon be what once was Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy shudder. The Divination Tower shakes and leans over, collapsing as it goes, and slams down on the Beauxbatons carriage. Another roar, and the sides of the Durmstrang ship explode outward, and it begins sinking into the lake. The Great Hall, the greenhouses, all of them light up in massive detonations.

I turn to look at Ginny and take her hand.

You met me at a very strange time in my life.


End file.
